


Gravity Falls Relativity Falls SEASON FOUR

by redwoodroots



Series: Gravity Falls Relativity Falls [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redwoodroots/pseuds/redwoodroots
Summary: IT'S BACK PEOPLE!!!  WOOHOO!





	1. A Tale of Two Pines

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S BACK PEOPLE!!! WOOHOO!

Stan's brain was stuck somewhere between _oh, yay, I'm alive!_ and _WHAT THE ACTUAL MABEL JUICE IS GOING ON???_

Ria was sitting up behind him, Ford was standing next to him and Mabel was slowly getting to her feet, her joints popping and cracking like Rice Kippy Cereal. So at least his family was okay. The lab was a different story. The fluorescent bulbs had pretty much exploded; the only light came from the dying eye of the portal and a couple of blinking computer screens. The harsh electric light cast dark shadows over the broken beams, steel plates, collapsed machinery, sparking wires...and the sci fi warlock dude, standing in the middle of the mess, staring at them like they'd each grown two extra heads. 

Mabel stepped slowly towards him, tears shining in her eyes. 

“You're actually here,” she whispered. “ _Brother!_ ”

The guy lunged. Stan leaped forward but the guy threw her to the ground and – 

– and she was _laughing?_

She was! She and Science Terminator were both laughing and rolling around on the floor like Gompers when he'd found Stan's cache of toffee peanuts.

“I can't believe it's you!” Mabel said, over and over. “It's you, it's really you, I can't believe you're here!”

“You did it, you brought me back, you would not believe what I've been through, I thought I'd never see you again –”

“I thought I'd never see _you_ again –”

“– but you're actually here –”

“– and so are you!”

Ria sniffed loudly. “It's so beautiful!”

At the sound of her voice, Sci Fi Warlock Dude sat up and noticed them. “Wait, Mabel, you turned the portal on with _people_ here?! It's dangerous! Those are _kids!_ ” He paused and squinted at Ria. “And some sort of large, hairless gopher?”

“Panda,” Ria corrected. 

Mabel grinned and jumped to her feet. “Oh, you're gonna _love_ this! Dipper, meet your family! This is Stan and Ford, our great-nephews! Plus Ria, who is not technically related to us but is basically my adopted daughter!”

Ria immediately passed out again. 

“I...have grephews?” He knelt in front of Stan and held out a hand. “Greetings.! Quick question, do they still have ghosts or have they all been exorcised by now? I haven't been in this dimension in a really long time.”

Stan snorted. He looked like Mabel and he sounded like Ford, this guy was definitely related. And, if he'd come from a place with a bunch of cool science stuff...

“Yeah, still ghosts,” he said, and reached out to shake his hand. 

“Hey – oh, no you don't!” The Ladly Guy pulled back with a laugh. “Sorry, but I can't let you pickpocket _this._ ” He flicked his wrist slightly and his sleeve fell back to reveal the absolute _coolest_ spy-portal-tech-watch Stan had ever seen. One more flick and it literally bristled with – 

“ARE THOSE LOCK PICKS?!”

“Got me out of quite a few jails!” the guy said cheerfully. 

“Dude, you are the coolest person alive! Ford, quick, take a look at – aaand here we go.”

Ford was staring at the author all bug-eyed and sweaty, and he was starting to hyperventilate. 

“I-I can't believe it. Y-y-you're the _Author of the Journals!_ ”

“You've read my journals?” Dipper asked, getting to his feet. 

Ford was practically choking on his own excitement. Then Stan realized he actually was choking. He hurried over and started pounding his back as Ford braced himself on his knees. 

“He's a major science dork,” Stan explained. 

“I'm okay,” he gasped. “I'm o-ooooh, I'm gonna throw up.” He dry-heaved. “Hlp! False alarm. _Hhlp!_ Just gotta ride it out...”

Stan rolled his eyes but kept pounding. 

“Ah, yes. Well. There will be time for introductions later.” He glanced at Mabel. “As long as no one else knows about the portal...”

“What? No! Just us!” She paused. “Also maybe the entire U.S. Government.”

“The _what?!_ ” 

He rushed to the window of the lab. Stan, Ford and Mabel hurried close behind.

A small security TV showed the lawn of the Mystery Shack swarming with government agents. 

“Spread out!” Agent Powers ordered. “We're not going anywhere until we find Mabel Pines and those kids!”

Dipper glared at Mabel, who laughed nervously. 

“Ahaha...um, whoops?”

Dipper groaned and pinched his nose. Stan stared. It was the exact same gesture Ford did whenever Stan got caught pulling a prank. 

_Is that what we'd look like if we were old and crusty?_

“Okay. It's alright,” Dipper said, although his tone was majorly annoyed. “We've got awhile before they find this room. We just need to lay low and think of a plan.” He turned and pulled out his book, stepping towards the broken portal. 

“BACKSTORY!” Ria shouted, suddenly sitting up. Dipper jumped back with a yelp. 

“ _Are you sure you're not a whack-a-mole!?_ ”

“Stan said the Ms. Pines has like a million different drivers licenses and the portal just barfed out a Science Wizard Pines. Are there more versions of you guys we should know about?”

Dipper blinked. “What was that about drivers' licenses?”

“Uuuuum...whoops again?” Mabel said. 

“Good grief, Mabel, what've you been doing all these years?!”

“Yeah.” Ford looked at Mabel, his eyes suddenly a lot sharper. “No more lies. Who are you guys, really? What's the deal with this portal? Why did you keep this a secret?”

“And are we actually related to a dimension-hopping criminal because that would be _awesome_ ,” Stan added. 

And how did you never tell us about a dimension-hopping jailbird uncle?” Stan demanded.

“Okay okay,” Mabel said quickly. “I know I've got a lot of explaining to do. It all started –”

“Wait wait, I wanna get comfy.” Stan sat down on some nearby portal pieces and took some toffee peanuts out of his pants pockets. “Okay, go.”

“You're definitely related,” Dipper muttered to Mabel. 

She grinned. “You bet we are. Alright, it all started a lifetime ago. Nineteen sixty-something. Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey...”

 

Nineteen Sixty-Something, Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey

 

Mabel had her ear pressed up against the bedroom door. Ma had left for her Lady's Tea Society Volunteer Group, and Pa was downstairs as usual, carving. She could hear him cursing under his breath.

She pulled away from the door with a grin. “Okay, we're good to go! Got the supplies?”

“Ready!”

Her brother grinned at her, crouching in front of the window. They were fraternal twins, but almost identical: chubby faces, brown eyes, brown curly hair. The only difference was that her hair reached her waist and his arms were basically noodles. 

Spread out on the floor was a rope made of bedsheets and two backpacks. His was full of nerdstuff and her was full of craft supplies and snacks. _Lots_ of snacks. 

She grinned. “Let's do this, baby!” 

He tied the rope to the bunk bed, she threw it out the window, and they quickly shimmied down. (Well, Mabel shimmied. Dipper had the upper body strength of a chocolate eclair, so he needed a little help.) Then they ran barefoot across the yard, climbed the fence, and headed straight for the beach. They left the rope where it was. Pa never bothered checking on them once he'd sent them to their room, and they had the whole day until Ma came home. The plan was basically to run around on the beach without any adult supervision whatsoever. 

It was _paradise_. 

Mabel grabbed Dipper and started sprinting as soon as they hit the sand. 

“Wha – slow down!” 

“I wanna get to the Rock before li'l Pete throws up on it!” 

“Why do you – insist on naming sea gulls – when they're all the same?”

She glanced back and grinned. “Because li'l Pete is the only one who hates me for licking ice cream off the sidewalk before he could get to it! Now c'mon, bro-bro, keep up!”

“I-I can keep up!” he wheezed. 

She laughed and slowed down anyway.

Most days, they had the sand and surf to themselves. It wasn't called Glass Shard Beach for no reason. Once, the Tea Ladies had tried to clean up the glass, but more just appeared overnight. Mabel didn't mind, she loved making pictures and wind chimes with the soft cloudy glass.

But the tide pools were definitely their favorite places. It was tiny, mostly confined to the Rock, but there were no sharp shards and the rock was flat and smooth and perfect for picnics and drawing. 

They reached the rock, but Mabel took one look at it and groaned. 

“Aw, li'l Pete _did_ throw up on it.! All over it, too. Ew, what did he eat, funnel cake and oysters?”

“They had that carnival yesterday at school,” Dipper reminded her.

“Oh, I forgot.”

He shrugged without meeting her eyes. They'd missed most of the carnival because the Jerks had stuck her brother face-first in a garbage can. It had taken Mabel a whole hour to find him and another one to help him get cleaned off. 

Her brother tugged his hat lower over his eyes. 

“Well – that's okay, we can do something different!” she said quickly. “Hey! Wanna see how far we can walk down the beach? We've never made it past the Bowling Alley yet!”

“That's because every time you get close you want to stop and go bowling. Even though we have no money and the balls probably outweigh us.”

“Well today we're gonna be Star Troopers and explore the final premier!” 

“ _Frontier,_ ” Dipper corrected, but he was grinning again. “Okay, lead the way!” 

It took them the better part of the morning, even with them walking most of the time. The rest of the time they ran, because it was the only way to eat snacks and avoid dive-bombing sea gulls at the same time. And then a couple of times Mabel found the world's cutest crab, so of course she had to stop and pet it, plus Dipper found starfish with a million limbs, so of course he had to stop and take pictures of it. Mabel teased him for it, but she liked his dorky side. It was part of what made him her brother. 

They reached the Bowling Alley, then went past it. They celebrated with more snacks, then Mabel made a mistake of trying to feed a pelican. They were even worse than the seagulls. Mabel grabbed Dipper had to practically sprint for safety. When the two of them finally stopped running, they were a good four or five miles away from home, close to the pier at the end of the beach.

“That was a mistake,” Mabel gasped. 

Dipper was clutching his chest. “Are we...dead yet...”

“We'd be less tired...if we were dead,” Mabel managed. “Or more...floaty. If I were dead, that's what I – _hey!_ ”

Something pushed her in the chest so hard she spun in a full circle and landed flat on her butt. 

Dipper stared at her. “What was that for?”

“What do you mean, what was that for? You pushed me!”

“Did not.”

“Did _too!_ ”

He scowled. “I said I didn't and I didn't! Geez, at least if you were a ghost you wouldn't worry so much about fall –” Suddenly Dipper hit the ground, hard, looking just as stunned as Mabel felt. 

She offered a hand and they got to her feet. 

“Mabel,” Dipper said. His face practically glowed with excitement. “I think that was a _real live ghost!_ ”

“You mean a real dead ghost.”

“Ghosts usually haunt buildings, right?” 

They looked around. The beach was lined with a ten-foot chainlink fence, beyond which were the stern backs of industrial buildings. They were pretty new-looking and they could hear the faint hum of normal machine-type activity. 

They turned. At the end of the pier was a half-rotted building shrouded in mist, the paint peeled away, the broken windows jutting out their shards like rows of teeth. The building even groaned in the wind, like the wrong step could bring the whole thing crashing to the waves below. 

So they did they only sensible thing and went inside. 

“Flashlights,” Mabel whispered as they crossed the entrance. They both took their flashlight keychains out and moved forward, carefully. 

The building was only slightly better on the inside. It looked like it had once been some kind of diner. There was a big open room scattered with metal chairs so rusted they were basically cemented to the floor, and chandeliers covered in cobwebs and bat droppings. Then Mabel swept her flashlight to the back of the room and gasped. 

“Dipper Dipper look – it's a _stage!_ ” 

She bounded over the furniture and practically catapulted onto it, then had to immediately jump off when the wood started to give. 

“Haha, whoops! That could've ended badly!” 

“It really is a stage,” Dipper said, coming up behind her. “I guess this was some kind of fancy dinner-and-a-show place. I wonder why they shut it down?”

Something suddenly snapped above them. Without thinking Mabel screamed “WATCH OUT!” and then launched herself at Dipper, knocking them both out of the way as a chandelier came crashing to the floor. It punched straight through the rotten boards and hit the actual pier three feet below. Dipper's hat had flown off but he didn't look the least bit concerned. 

“Whoa! Did you see that, did you see it?!” He scrambled to his feet and hurried as close to the hole as he dared, aiming his flashlight at the ceiling. “Look, that's the one chain that does't look rusted at all! It looks like someone sliced right through it! I knew it, this place is haunted!” 

“ _Of course it is!_ ” 

Mabel jumped to her feet with a shout. All around them the chandeliers were suddenly glowing with eerie green light, and torches suddenly flared to life along the walls. Small colonies of bats screeched at the intrusion on their beauty sleep, and spiders crawled for cover as ghosts oozed from the ceiling and rose through the floor. 

A particularly pudgy and extremely bald ghost rose from the hole directly in front of Dipper. 

“ _WELL, BOY?_ ” he boomed. “ _COME TO VANDALIZE MY RESTAURANT? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?_ ” 

“You,” Dipper sputtered. “You're – so – _cool!_ ”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” 

“What's your name? How long have you haunted this place? Are you the one who pushed us? Can you touch all corporeal objects at will or is there like a recharge time in between?” 

“ _Er..._ ” He looked at Mabel, clearly baffled. 

She grinned. “He's a paranormal nerdbro, what can I say.”

“ _He's a bit scrawny though, isn't he?_ ” another spirit asked, eyeing him up and down. She was holding a ghost terrier in her arms.

Mabel squealed. “GHOST PUPPY!”

“ _Urgh._ ” The woman floated out of reach. “ _Are we going to be served soon? I've been waiting decades for my order of sauteed asparagus!_ ”  
“ _You're dead, Josephine, you can't eat anymore._ ”  
“ _Well_ they're _not dead now, are they? Chop chop, peasants, I'm hungry!_ ”

The skinny ghost rolled his eyes. “ _Great, they've set her off again._ ” 

“ _You're disturbing my customers,_ ” Pudgeface growled. “ _The two of you will have to go._ ” 

Immediately something grabbed Mabel and Dipper by the back of their shirts and started hauling them back to the door. 

“Wait wait wait!” Dipper cried. “I can get asparagus! And doggy kibbles! And little fancy Tea Lady sandwiches!”

The dragging stopped and Josephine instantly perked up. Even the other ghosts started looking interested. 

“ _Tea sandwiches, you say?_ ” asked a very old lady ghost. “ _The kind with fresh cucumber, perhaps?_ ”

“Yeah! So – so if I get that stuff, can I come back and interview you guys!? We could publish stuff in periodicals! _Periodicals_ , guys!”

“They have other punctuation, too,” Mabel added. 

The ghosts were looking at each other now, arguing under their breath. 

“ _We'll think about it,_ ” Pudgeface finally declared. “ _Come back with provisions and we'll discuss things. We need to think it over._ ”

Mabel eyed the terrier. “Okay, but – could I pet the ghost puppy just a little bit, pleeeeeease?”

The lady rolled her eyes, then allowed each of them to pat the terrier. (It didn't feel like anything, their hands phased right through it, but the puppy seemed to like it.) The Pudgeface shoved Dipper's hat into his hands and shooed them out of the restaurant. 

“Oh man oh man oh man!” Dipper repeated. By the time they reached the end of the pier he was practically vibrating with excitement. “Mabel did you see the ghosts, did you see it!?”

“I mean I just got to pet a ghost puppy, so yeah?! IT WAS SO CUUUTE!” 

He laughed. “A _haunted restaurant!_ How much pocket money you got? We could go get the kibble and asparagus right now! D'you think we could make it back before Ma gets home? Oh! I need cameras! I read it in _X-Guys_ , if you're doing scientific observation you have to record OW!” A rock bounced off Dipper's head.

“Well, well, well, if it ain't the loser twins.”

Her brother froze and Mabel looked up sharply. The three Jerks stood at an opening in the chainlink fence, dressed in their usual matching outfits that practically oozed smugness, complete with neckties and actual grown-man cologne. 

The middle jerk sneered down at them. “Nice place you got here. It's a step up from your last dump.”

“What is your problem, Pete?!” Mabel shouted. “There's three of us and two of you, we get it! We learned to count in kindergarten! But maybe you should go back, pretty sure you left your manners behind!”

Pete stepped forward and Dipper instantly stepped back. Mabel moved between them. 

Pete jabbed his finger at Dipper. “Listen close you little freaks. You're a permanent acne ad, and you're just a dumber glue-covered version of him. And you're lucky you two have each other, because neither of you will ever make any friends!”

He sauntered away, the other two snickering and casting snide looks over their shoulders. 

Mabel glared after them. “Lousy jerkfaces. What are they even doing here? Don't they usually go to croissant lessons or something?”

She blew the biggest raspberry she could, then turned to her brother. He was pulling his hat down again, so far it looked like it was trying to swallow his face.

“Hey.” She reached out and gently pulled his hand away. “Don't listen to those guys. We're not freaks.”

“ _You're_ not,” Dipper muttered. “I've got a target stamped on my face. For once I just want to find a place I actually fit in.”

Mabel wrapped her arms around him and gave him a Maximum Sister Love Hug, squeezing as tight as she could. 

“Right here, Dipdip. You will always fit right here. And...” She stepped back and waved grandly to the rotting old building. “Right there! Think about it, did any of those ghosts make fun of you? Nope! And your hat was off practically the whole time!” 

He looked at the building, eyes still shadowed. “Mabel, I can't exactly live here. The place could fall down around my ears and bury my corpse twenty feet below sea level under a pile of moldy lumber. And I seriously doubt there's a working toilet.”

“So we fix it! I mean seriously, I'm the arts-'n'-crafts master. Plus Pa has loads of carpentry stuff we could borrow!”

“Define 'borrow'.”

“There was even a stage in there and everything! OH!” She grabbed her brother by the shoulders. “We could turn it into a theater, Dipper! _A haunted theater!_ With dramatic plays and costumes by yours truly and special effects from the actual ghosts!”

His lips twitched. “You mean it?”

“Absolutely!” She spun around so both of them faced the building and swept her arm like she was showcasing the opening night. “We can put on plays by day and study ghosts at night! We'll get so famous kids'll draw your birthmark on their own faces for cosplay and my costumes will start fashion trends all over the world! Pines Playwrights will be the finest assembly of ectoplasmic actors on the whole coast!”

He was definitely grinning now. “What happened to being the Amazing Sequin Seekers?”

“Work with me, Dipper.” She bumped him with her hip and held up a fist. “Pines Playwrights?”

“Pines Playwrights,” he agreed, and fist-bumped back. 

 

Now

 

“Wait wait wait,” Ford cut in. “Are you saying you found an entire building _filled with ghosts!?_ How many were there? Were they all conscious? Were any of them hostile? Were all of them poltergeists? Under what conditions were their powers most effective and how did mmf!”

“Yeah yeah,” Stan said, one hand over Ford's mouth. “Can we skip to the part about beating up the Jerks? This story needs more action in it.”

Ford glared at him. 

“They definitely deserved it,” Mabel agreed, cracking her knuckles. “But they really _did_ have Croissant Lessons or whatever they did, so they mostly left us alone on the weekend. School was still tough, and we really didn't make any friends, but you really only need one. I kept the Jerks and Jerk-wannabes from messing with us, and Dipper helped me with my homework, since my brain wasn't exactly academically inclined.”

Dipper arched an eyebrow. “You were fine when you applied yourself.”

“I _was_ applying myself.”

“But the ghosts!” Ford gasped, finally managing to yank Stan's hand away. 

Dipper's eyes lit up. “Right, right, the ghosts! They weren't exactly friendly – more like stray alley cats that would let you feed them or try to claw your eyes out, you never knew which – but they got used to us and we did experiments on torque and leverage –”

“Meaning they helped us screw stuff in or lift wooden beams,” Mabel translated. 

“And velocity! Momentum! Kinetic energy! Their battles with seagulls were of epic supernatural proportions!”

Mabel laughed, wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, both of them grinning. 

“That's my bro-bro,” she said proudly. “He was learning all the time. He got so many academic awards Pa made a whole trophy case for 'em in our bedroom! His brain got more impressive every year, and so did our pet project. Turns out Pudgface was the previous owner, and he helped us buy it for a song and showed us how to renovate the whole place, right down to the fancy doorknobs on the dressing rooms. The future was looking bright for both of us!”

“So...what happened?” Stan asked. Ford felt his brother grab a corner of his jacket. “Did, uh, did your dad finally catch you with his tools or something?”

Mabel's face fell and she glanced at Dipper, whose mouth tightened. 

“Not exactly.”

 

Nineteen Seventy-Something, Glass Shard Beach High School, Home of the Beach Birds of Death

 

“Pines twin to the principal's office. Pines twin to the principal's office.” 

Dipper glanced up from his essay, then at Mabel, who was doodling on a notebook. Her face had gone white. 

“Well?” Ms. Gothard said loudly, without looking up from her novel. “You heard her, Mabel, get going.”

Dipper frowned. “She said 'Pines _twin,_ ' Ms. Gothard.”

“Fine, both of you, then.”

Dipper got up and headed into the hallway, Mabel right behind him. He glanced back and saw her hands shaking. She was even muttering under her breath. 

“Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man...”

“Mabel, what's wrong?”

“They caught me, Dipper! They caught me cheating on the test last week!”

“What!” Dipper grabbed her arm, stopping them both. “Mabel, I told you to study! What happened to the flashcards we made?” 

“I got distracted decorating them! Dad said he'd kick me out if they caught me again. They're gonna kick me out, Dipper, what're we gonna do?!” Tears spilled down her cheeks. 

He set his jaw. “Well, relax, okay? We'll deal with this together. We don't even know which one of us they want to talk to.” 

He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and they headed to the office. 

The secretary looked up from filing her nails. “Not you, him,” she said, pointing to Dipper. 

They both blinked. But this was a good thing, right? It meant Mabel wasn't in trouble! He gave her an encouraging smile and she sat down in a chair, digging her nails into her knees and looking every inch the guilty cheater. He winced, collected himself, and strolled into the principal's office like everything was perfectly normal. 

He nearly stopped short. They turned around when he came in. He headed to the chair between them and sat down on his hands to keep them from shaking. Maybe he was the one in trouble? But he never got in trouble!

The principal cleared his throat. “Now, Mr. and Mrs. Pines, I'd like to speak to you very frankly, if I may.”

“Very frankly is the only way I speak,” Mr. Pines said flatly. 

“You have two children. One of them is incredibly gifted. The other one is sitting outside this room and is named Mabel.” 

Dipper frowned. “Now wait a minute –”

“What are you saying?” Mrs. Pines asked at the same time. 

The principal grinned. “I'm saying your son Dipper is a genius! All his teachers are going _bananas_ over his science project!” He pulled a pamphlet out of a drawer in his desk and passed it to Dipper. “You ever hear of West Coast Tech? Best science college in the country. Their college graduates turn science fiction into science fact!” 

Dipper looked through the pamphlet. A master's program in quantum mechanics. A doctorate in metaphysical physics. Several Nobel Prize winners available to mentor students for independent study units. Sixteen documentary awards from all fields of science. 

He swallowed so he wouldn't drool. There was actually a school like this? If he had a degree from a place like that he was sure his paranormal investigations would be taken seriously!

“The admissions team is coming tomorrow to check out Dipper's experiment,” the principal continued. “Your son may be a future millionaire!” 

His father grunted. “Well done, son.”

Dipper stared at him. Had he heard that right? Had that been an actual compliment from Dad? 

“But what about our little free spirit Mabel?” his mother asked, jolting him out of his shock. 

The principal raised an eyebrow. “That clown? At this rate, she'll be lucky not to get expelled for cheating. Look, there's a saltwater taffy store down by the docks. Somebody's gotta get paid to scrape the barnacles off of it – if she doesn't spray paint it with flowers first. Face it, Dipper's going places! But Mabel's –”

“My sister,” Dipper cut in, fully aware that she was right outside the door. “I'd like to talk this over with her before I make any decisions about it. And West Coast hasn't even seen my project yet. I might not get in.” 

Their father snorted. No one in the room actually believed that. 

Dipper stood up, clutching the pamphlet tightly. “Thanks for the pamphlet, Mr. Saunders,” he said. “This is really amazing news, I think I just I need some time to process it.” He kissed his mother and headed for the door. 

 

They were down by Pines' Playwrights, on a swingset Josephine had helped them build when they were fourteen. Mabel swung a little, trying to ignore the nasty twisting feeling in her gut. Her brother was still looking at that dumb college pamphlet. He hadn't let go of it all day. He'd practically drooled on it in class. 

“Look, who even needs to go to college?” she said brightly, 100% faking it. “Once we get Pines Playwrights furnished, we're gonna stage so many plays we'll be the next Broadway!” 

“Um, yeah...” Dipper looked at the pamphlet like it held the recipe to the world's best ice cream. “Listen, Mabel, I can't pass up a chance like this. You know Ma and Pa don't have a lot of money. I'd never get into a school like this on my own – but there's an actual team coming just to see my project! And they've got a ton of crazy doctorates – they've got a cutting-edge program in multidimensional paradigm theory, which, if I'm right about where ghosts originate –”

She laughed and swung a little. “Slow down there, Dippin' Sauce, I don't speak nerd robot!” 

“Ha, ha. Look, I know this isn't exactly what we've planned, but can't the Pines Playwrights wait a few years?” He looked up at her. “I just – I really want to go to college. I want to _be_ somebody.” 

“You already are.” She stopped swinging, scuffing the sand with her toes. “You're my brother, and my best friend.” 

“You know what I mean, Mabel.” 

“No, I don't think _you_ know what _I_ mean.” She stood up suddenly. “Everybody at school thinks I'm a joke. You're the only one I can really count on. I can't follow you to college. What am I supposed to do, just sit here and get left behind?” She turned away, then felt a hand on her shoulder. 

“Mabel, you're not getting left behind. I'll come visit you every holiday, we can send letters – we can make it work!” 

“So you've already decided.” 

“Well...yeah.”

She pulled away and faced him, glaring through her tears. “You never planned to think it over. You decided right there in the principle's office. You were just going to ditch me!” 

“I am _not_ ditching you, okay? _Not_ ditching! If the college board isn't impressed with my experiment tomorrow, then of course I'll do Pines' Playwrights.” 

“And if they are?” 

“Look, Mabel, what are you expecting me to do here?” He stepped back. “I love our theater. It's the only bright spot in this nothing town. But I can't stay stuck here forever. Even some of the ghosts have passed on. Things change.” He squeezed the pamphlet. “Summer ends.” 

The tears spilled down her face and she ran, down the beach, down the street, the sound of her brother calling after her fading on the wind. 

 

She couldn't think. She was moving, that was all she knew. And then she was in the alley behind McWonald's where a bunch of alley cats hang out. She barely even realized she was there until they started twining around her ankles. 

“Hey friends,” she said automatically. One of them, that was Catpotato, started chewing on her sleeve. He liked to chew and shred whatever he could. 

“Yes you can chew on my sweater,” she mumbled.

She took out some kibble she kept in her pocket and passed it around. She'd taught the cats to wait their turn, and they ate out of her hands, their whiskers tickling their palm. When they were done they stayed for extra petting. None of them had ribs poking through their fur anymore, and sometimes she brought a big tub and gave them all a bath. They did not much like that. But they'd never abandon her. They'd never just _leave_. 

She looked at Catpotato. He purred when she picked him up. The other cats followed her when she started walking. She felt like her brain was wrapped in fog. She didn't even notice where she was going.

The school came into view.

 

Dipper didn't see his sister for the rest of the day. She didn't even come home that night. Pa didn't notice and he covered for her with Ma. She was probably staying the night at Pines' Playwrights. Lately they'd been having more and more sleepovers there anyway, especially after they got the floor fixed up. 

She didn't show up for school, though, either, and it was the day of the Science Fair. He missed her, but he shut the feeling out and concentrated on his presentation. He'd created a camera capable of detecting the entire spectrum of light, testing it out on the Playwright ghosts, and made a record so complete, thorough, and repeatable that it literally proved the existence of “noncorporeal entities” and immediately supported no less than five current ontological and philosophical theories proposed by West Coast's leading professors. If that didn't get there attention, nothing would!

He watched the clock eagerly, then at the appointed time excused himself from Ms. Gothard's class. She didn't let him leave until the last minute, so he ended up running to the auditorium, thankful he'd thought to tuck his bowtie into his pocket instead of keeping it in his locker. His project was still covered in cloth just like he'd left it. He barely had time to put on the bow tie before he saw a group of men and women in matching suits walking down the aisle. 

“Mason Pines?” the man in the lead asked. 

“Yes!” His voice cracked and he winced, lowering it. “I mean, yes, sir.”

“Alright kid, show us what you got.” 

He grinned. “Okay – what would you say if I told you the future of metaphysical phenomenon was _beneath this sheet?!_ ” He whipped it off dramatically. 

“I'd say we wasted a car trip.” 

“What?” He glanced behind him and choked. 

His camera was smashed, the photos were shredded, and the 142-page report he'd written had been shredded to make a nest for a very scrawny tabby cat, who was curled up and fast asleep in the middle of the mess! 

“I – no, but – that's not even my cat!” Dipper sputtered. 

“Kid, a serious West Coast applicant doesn't let cats use his notes for a nest. I don't think you're West Coast material.”

“Wait, wait, please! I've been studying this my whole life, I can just recite my report word for word, don't go!” 

But the man and his colleagues were walking away. Dipper moved to follow them and something crunched under his foot. 

He stared at it. His pulse thundered in his ears. 

 

Mabel was knitting another sweater in front of the television when she heard the front door slam. Dipper stomped in and stood squarely in front of the set. 

She looked up. “Hey, Dipper! So, what'd they –”

“Can you explain what _this_ was doing next to my. Broken. Project?!” 

Dipper held up a cat keychain in his fist. Her name was written on the back in fancy magenta letters. 

Mabel winced. “Ohhh. Okay, so I was just getting some fuzz therapy last night, and I was walking around, and I miiiight have lost track of Catpotato –”

“The one you _know_ likes to shred paper?! The one who just happened to pick _my project to shred?!_ ”

“I'm sorry! It was an accident!”

“No it wasn't, Mabel! _You_ did this! You did this because you couldn't handle me going to college on my own!” 

“Well you were gonna leave me behind!” 

“ _NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU, MABEL!_ ” 

“Dipper?” their mother yawned, shuffling in with the baby in her arms. Their father followed. “What's going on in here?”

“Ask Mabel,” Dipper gritted out. 

All eyes turned on her and she tried to hide inside her sweater. 

“I-I may have been...there were kittens, who...accidentally! Uh...” Her voice got so tiny they could barely hear it. “Broke Dipper's project?”

“ _YOU WHAT?_ ” 

Their father grabbed Mabel's arm and hauled her to her feet. Three minutes later he was shoving her out the door and throwing a stuffed duffel bag after her. It hit her in the chest so hard she stumbled back and sat down on the cement, hard. 

“You ignoramus,” he snarled. “All you ever do is laze around and cheat and ride on your brother's coattails. Well this time you've cost our family potential millions! And until you make us a fortune, you're not welcome in this household!” 

“It was an accident!” she repeated, scrambling to her feet. “Dipper, tell him!” 

He hesitated. 

Their father slammed the door. 

 

Now

 

Dipper and Mabel glared at each other. Stan's stomach felt like it was boiling. 

“You could've come looking for me,” Mabel gritted out. “You could've _defended_ me.” 

“I did! Pa said if I went looking for you he wouldn't pay for my college at all. And thanks to you I didn't exactly have the luxury of a scholarship! Backupsmore was the best I could get as it was! Do you know what their catch phrase is, Mabel?! 'Mostly Bug-Free Dorms!' _Mostly!_ ” 

“That still means you picked college over your own sister! I waited for you at Pines Playwrights! I waited and waited until I finally realized you didn't care what happened to me!”

“ _I_ didn't care?!”

“Stan,” Ria said, nudging him. 

Both older twins looked over. Stan realized he'd been gripping the edge of Ford's jacket so tight his fingers were numb. He let go, but Ford hadn't even seemed to notice. He was too busy staring at Dipper.

“But the research,” Ford pressed, and Stan rolled his eyes. “I mean if something like _that_ had hit the periodicals, I definitely would've read about it! What happened, did you redo the work? Was it published? Was just your name on it or did you have to put the ghosts on it, do participant ghosts count as coauthors?”

“If anything, I guess Mabel would've been the coauthor, since she helped me do a lot of the experiments and recordings.” He looked at her for a minute. “If you left Pines Playwrights...where did you even go?”

“The Boardwalk,” she said shortly. “Madam Mabel's Booth of Mystery was a huge hit with the tourists. I told fortunes, predicted soulmates, and charged people outrageous sums of money to pet my clowder of lucky cats! Within a couple of months I'd saved enough to buy a motorcycle, and things were going pretty well until I got a customer wearing half a rainforest of animal skins.”

“What happened?” Ria asked. 

She grinned. “Sicced my cats on her. Unfortunately, the cops weren't too crazy about that, and neither was the city, who didn't like it when rich tourists left without spending a lot of money. I was officially banned from New Jersey. 

“That was a bummer, but with a quick name change, Maple Pinesyrup's Traveling Clowder was open for business! It got so popular we got hired by a traveling circus. We travelled the whole country, sometimes outside of it, we had to change our identities a few times to keep the cops off our tail.” 

Stan leaned forward. “Why would the cops be on your trail?”

“Cops are just prejudiced against the acrobatically gifted. Also we may or may not have acquired new animal acts right after animal testing factories were raided.”

Both Ria and Stanley cheered, yelling “Animal rights!” and “Thievery!”

“Wait, what about you?” Ford asked Dipper. “What happened at college?”

He grimaced. “In a place like Backupsmore I had to work twice as hard. Luckily that's what I do best. I designed my own separate curriculums for myself in paranormal studies and film development and went from undergraduate to PhD three years ahead of schedule, wrote a thesis that was nationally ranked, and exposed three government conspiracies. I was also awarded an enormous grant for my own scientific research. 

“I still wanted to study the paranormal, and especially after the conspiracy thing, get out from under the FBI's radar. According to my investigations, there was one place that had a higher concentration of anomalies than anywhere else, somewhere outside of Big Brother's watching eyes. A small lumber town in Roadkill County, Oregon.

“ _Gravity Falls._ ”

Mabel snorted. 

Dipper scowled at her. “Which one of us was expanding the frontiers of science and which one was cleaning funnel cake vomit off of circus tents?” 

“We used water balloons, it was totally awesome! Besides, I sort of had to ditch the circus after the Popcorn-Python Debacle of '79. But!” She held up a finger. “That worked out great! I developed a sophisticated new business strategy involving edible glitter, meat-free fudge and card tricks!” 

“Isn't fudge _already_ meat free?” Ria muttered to Stan. 

“I was in great shape!” Mabel continued loudly. “Living on my own! Going wherever the wind took me! Or whatever state I wasn't banned in yet! And the best part was I didn't need help from anybody!” 

Dipper bristled. “Well good. Because so was I. There were plenty of ghosts here to keep me occupied. In fact, I found and rented a cabin practically infested with ectolasmic entities, only to realize that I couldn't actually live there without ghosts watching me shave every morning and eating food covered in ghost goo. I rented an apartment in town while I used my grant money to construct a secure home-slash-lab away from prying eyes. 

“The town itself was a plethora of supernatural activity. I was barely there a day before I discovered several doors which appeared and disappeared at will, soothsquitos added nonsense writing to the marks on my forehead, and Steve ate my car. I realized there was far more to the town than ectoplasmic activity. I knew I'd have to record my findings. I began to keep a journal –”

“ _AAAAAAAH! THE JOURNALS!_ ” 

They looked at Ford.

“Sorry, sorry. Just. Got excited there. About the journals.” He cleared his throat. “Keep – keep talking.” 

“I began to keep a journal –”

“ _AAAAAAAH!_ ” 

“...Just going to ignore that. Anyway, there were anomalies everywhere, and the more I looked, the more I saw. Eyebats, shapeshifters, unnatural geographic formations, cursed gnomes, multibears and giant teeth. I'd finally found a place where I felt at home. But something nagged at me: where did it all come from?

“Various sources and my own research indicated that the answer lay literally outside this world. A dimension of weirdness leaking into ours. I realized I had to build a gateway, a portal to the source of its weirdness. But I couldn't make it alone. I decided to call up my old college friend, Candy Chu – what?”

Mabel was wriggling like a puppy. 

“You had a _girlfriend?!_ ” she squealed. “I can't believe my nerdbro had an actual human romantic partner! I was expecting a siren or something!” 

Stan grinned and nudged his brother. “Sounds like you.”

“Shh!”

“It was strictly professional!” Dipper sputtered. “We were – I mean – and when I called her she'd already been married and had a child! She was just wasting her time experimenting with personal computers and fairly leaped at the chance to build a polydimensional metavortex. We worked together for months." His voice lowered like he was only talking to himself. “We'd known each other for years; I thought she could handle the work we were doing. She was certainly brilliant enough for it. But she had certain...reservations. By the time we'd finally finished the portal, I wasn't sure she would go through with the actual test.”

 

Gravity Falls, Nineteen Eighty-Something

 

The portal took eighteen hours to turn on, and he'd started the process the night before, as soon as he'd left the diner. Now it was 98% charged. 

Dipper stood behind the safety glass. The quark stabilizers lit up the whole lab with twin pillars of light. Electrical cords juiced with enough power to sustain the entire eastern seaboard hummed along the walls, the edges of the floor. The eye of the portal was still dark, an empty socket, but even as he watched thin threads of green and red lasers zinged across the room. His mouth tightened. The lasers had been Candy's idea. If the portal destabilized or even vibrated too much, they wouldn't hit their assigned sensors and the entire thing would shut down instantly. Dipper hated the idea, hated that the work he'd been trying so hard to complete could be destroyed _yet again_ by someone who didn't understand its value. But he'd agreed. 

Partly because the lasers just looked cool. 

But mostly, he'd agreed for Candy. 

Where was she now?

The computer beeped and he glanced down at it. 99%. When he looked back up the symbols around the eye of the portal had begun to glow, and a light was taking form at its center. He gripped the edge of the desk. Almost time. Almost time. 

He glanced at the dummy, propped on its chair in the corner. That, too, had been Candy's idea. If she wasn't here, should he even bother with it? There was rope right there in the portal room. If...if he tied it to something – 

Something banged behind him and he spun around. 

“You're here!”

Candy stepped out of the elevator. She was pale and there were dark shadows under her sunken eyes. She looked grim, but she met his eyes and smiled. 

“I'm here.” 

He nodded. “Let's do this. The portal's almost fully charged.” 

Their work was quick – Candy had made the two of them rehearse it plenty of times. Candy took the rope and secured it tightly around the test dummy. Dipper went from the control panel to keyboard to the shutdown switch, checking to make sure everything was fully operational. 

Suddenly a new light blazed over the room. He whipped around. The eye of the portal was lit! 

He rushed to the very edge of the caution tape. His skin tingled with its power and his hair floated off his head. 

“Dipper, come help me!” Candy called. Her voice sounded far away. He tore his eyes away from the portal and rushed to help Candy with the dummy. Each of them grabbed an arm and they lifted it to its feet. It was heavy, but as they approached the caution tape the dummy grew lighter and lighter. 

“Ready?” he asked. She met his eyes and nodded. “Okay, steady...now!” 

They both let go, pushing the dummy just over the line. Immediately the dummy ascended to the eye, rotating slowly, bathed in light. The eye grew brighter, as if whatever was on the other side could see them, was welcoming them – 

“ _AAGH!_ ” 

“What –”

Candy's body flew past him, tumbling through the air. The rope had caught around Candy's wrist, the portal was dragging her in! 

“CANDY!” Dipper's hand shot out and grabbed the rope. She was struggling to get it loose. “Don't untie it!” he screamed. “I have it – don't untie it, _don't untie it!_ ” 

The dummy entered the portal and the blue light flashed around it like living flames. Dipper's stomach leaped to his throat. He dug in his heels and pulled as hard as he could. 

For a horrible eternity of a second, Candy's whole upper torso disappeared, engulfed in the light. Lightning shot out of the portal, the heat of it scorching his skin. 

_Just a little more – c'mon, you scrawny nerd, PULL!_

With one final heave, he yanked Candy out of the light and back into their own dimension. He, Candy, and the dummy went tumbling across the floor. 

Then Dipper was scrambling to get to Candy. 

“What is it?!” he asked frantically. She was lying on the floor staring up, eyes wide. “Is it working?! _What did you see?!_ ” 

“ _VOTMZRIG IVSKRX OORY!_ ” 

“Candy?”

She sat up, shuddering. “When Gravity Falls...and earth becomes sky...fear the beast with just one eye!”

A chill ran down his spine. “Candy, you're not making any sense!” 

He reached for her shoulder and she shrieked, leaping to her feet like she'd been shocked. He stood up slowly, hands out. 

“Candy –”

“No!” She backed away, eyes wild. “You'll bring about the end of the world with this. Destroy it before it destroys us all!”

“I'm not destroying anything! You just became the first person to cross into another dimension, Candy! You just made history! Doesn't that matter to you? Doesn't any of this _matter?!_ ” 

“You did.” She was half-shadowed now, black hair hanging over her face. “And I thought I did. But this – it's evil. I won't be part of it anymore, I'd just as soon forget it ever happened. I quit.” She whirled and was gone. 

Dipper's stomach turned to ice. 

“Fine!” he yelled after her. “Fine! I'll do it without you! I don't need you, I don't need ANYONE!” 

His voice echoed, and kept echoing, distorting in the electrified air. It multiplied until there were more voices, hundreds of voices, whispering, hissing, giggling crazily. He whirled around. The eye of the portal glared down at him. A voice sounded in his ear and chilled him to the core. 

“ _THE DOOR IS OPEN._ ” 

 

It was snowing hard.

She'd been sitting in a small one-room time share, not necessarily with the owner's permission or knowledge. A knock came and she leaped to her feet, gripping her knitting needles like nunchucks.

“Just give me a few more days, Maggie! I won't skip town, I promise!” 

A piece of paper slipped under the door. The mailman? She eyed the paper and picked it up. 

It was a postcard. 

From Dipper. 

That was two days ago. She'd not only skipped town, she'd crossed the country and was currently standing in front of her brother's cabin in the middle of the woods. It was covered in snow, the windows were boarded up, and coils of barbed wire surrounded the cabin on three sides. A big wooden sign that read “Stay Out” felt directed specifically at her. 

She shivered, hugging her duffel bag to her chest as she pushed through the knee-high snow. She reached the door and paused. 

“You haven't seen your brother in over ten years,” she told herself. “It's okay. He's family! He won't bite.” 

_Knock, knock._

Instantly the door flung open and a crossbow was shoved in her face. 

“WHO IS IT!? HAVE YOU COME TO STEAL MY EYES!?”

Mabel froze. Her brother was wearing a really long trench coat over clothes that looked and smelled like they hadn't been washed in weeks. That was actually pretty typical. And he was wearing glasses now, super dorky but also fine. 

It was his face that really scared her. His eyes were sunken and blood-shot, and he was so pasty he looked almost whiter than the snow. 

“Ok I thought you wouldn't bite but you look like a vampire,” she said weakly. “And not the hot kind.”

Dipper took a half-step back, eyes frantically scanning behind her. “Mabel, did anyone follow you? Anyone at all?” 

“What? No – hey!” 

Dipper yanked her inside by the scruff of her jacket and half-blinded her with a flashlight. She pushed him back on reflex and nearly gasped. He was so light he was practically skin and bones!

“Sorry,” Dipper was saying, backing off. “I just – had to make sure you weren't...it's nothing. Come in, come in.” 

Mabel closed the door behind her, letting her eyes adjust. It was a pretty big living room crammed with stacked books, computer parts, and what looked like lumpy furniture under dusty sheets. There was also a plastic skeleton and, for some reason, a giant dinosaur skull sitting in a tank half-full of water. At least she assumed it was water, but last she checked water didn't smell like hot steel. And it felt like they were being _watched._

Dipper had gone to a desk at the back of the room, shuffling frantically through papers covered in dark red scribbles. 

“Uh, brobro? You gonna tell me what's going on? You're acting like me after my sixth bag of Smile Dip.” 

“Listen, there isn't much time.” He turned and hurried back, clutching a textbook in his arms. “I've made huge mistakes and I don't know who I can trust anymore.” 

When he passed the skeleton he turned the head away. So he felt it, too – maybe they were being watched. 

“Hey, easy there.” She put a hand on his back and he went still. “Look, let's talk this through, okay?” 

He turned to face her. “I...have something to show you. Something you won't believe.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Look, I've been around the world, okay? Whatever it is I'll understand it.” 

Five minutes later she was standing in front of something big, triangular, and straight out of science fiction. 

“There is nothing about this I understand.”

“It's a transuniversal gateway,” Dipper said. He even walked towards it with a hand stretched out, like he was a teacher giving a demonstration. “A punched hole through a weak spot in our dimension. I created it to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but it could just as easily be harnessed for terrible destruction.”

“Uh...right.” Mabel avoided looking directly at the eye. Then she realized she was thinking about the hole in the gateway as if it was an eye. “Well, can't you just...turn it off?” 

“I did.”

“The squiggles around the eye are still glowing,” Mabel pointed out. 

“It's _off_. I even hid my journals, which explain how to operate it.” He held up the textbook from earlier. “This is the only journal left. And you are the only person I can trust to take it.” 

He held it out and she took it. It wasn't a textbook, it looked almost like a spooky spellbook, with a maroon cover and bronze plating at the corners. The book had a pine tree in the middle with the number “1” in thick black ink. 

“I have something to ask of you.” He met her eyes. “Do you remember our plans to start Pines' Playwrights, when we were kids?”

She gave a little kitten gasp. He didn't mean...?

He slapped a paper on top of the journal. “Take the deed, tell the ghosts to guard it, and start Pines' Playwrights without me. Or tell them to throw the book in the ocean ten miles out. Just make sure no one can ever find it.” 

He walked away, arms crossed behind his back. 

For a second Mabel could see the whole scene from outside her body in perfect clarity: the rough walls, the portal, her brother's coat, her own slack-jawed profile. Then she was back in her body and her blood boiled. 

“ _That's it?!_ ” she sputtered. “You finally want to see me after ten years, and it's to tell me to get as far away from you as possible?!”

Dipper actually scoffed at her. “Mabel, you don't understand what I'm up against. What I've been through –”

“No no, you don't understand what _I've_ been through! I've been to prison in three different countries! I once jumped off a moving bullet train so I wouldn't get shot! And those ghosts you're so worried about? T _hey left when they realized you weren't coming back!_ I've been on my own for years, stealing restaurant breadsticks for lunch, and where have you been? Livin' it up in some fancy house in the woods! Selfishly hoarding your college money because you only care about yourself!” 

“Oh, I'm selfish? _I'm_ selfish!? Mabel, how can you even say that after costing me _my dream school?!_ ” He whirled and stalked away. “I never should've called you here, why do I tell you things I know you'll never understand?”

“I – you – fine, FINE! You know what? I understand that if something is really dangerous you get rid of the instructions, Dipper! How about that?!” She whipped out her lighter and flicked it open. 

“What – wait!” He leaped for the book, but she yanked it away. 

“You said I could have it so I'll do what I want with it!” 

“My research!” 

He full-body tackled her. Mabel shrieked and went down – even stick-skinny he was stronger than he looked and she hadn't been expecting that!

They scuffled and rolled across the floor until they were back in the computer-part of the basement. Dipper nearly got her in a headlock but she slipped under him and gut-punched him. He kicked out and she lost her balance, slammed back into the nearest keyboard. It hummed to life. 

“Give it back!” 

“You want it back you're gonna have to try harder than that!” 

The portal lit up and lightning zapped through the air. Mabel ran for the door but tripped over some wires. Dipper body-slammed her again and grabbed the book. She grabbed it too, scrambled to her feet, and pulled, digging her heels into the floor. 

“You left me behind, you jerk!” she shouted. “It was supposed to be us forever, you ruined my life!” 

“You ruined your own life!” 

She lost her grip and Dipper shot backwards and slammed so hard into the nearest wall she actually heard his skull crack. He slumped. She shrieked and moved to help him, but before she could even call his name his head snapped up, eyes bulging, grinning so wide his gums showed and he slammed her in the gut with both feet. 

She was down and pinned against a console for a full second before the heat registered in her brain. She screamed. It felt like her whole shoulder was lit on fire and Dipper's boots were still pressed into her gut – 

“Agh!” 

The pressure on her stomach vanished and she fell forward, gasping, clutching at her shoulder. Her brother looked down at her, looking worried – but both hands were still clutched around that stupid book!

“Mabel I'm sorry, are you okOW!” 

She punched him, hard, right in the schnozz. He stumbled back into the portal room and tripped over some kind of stupid stick, dropping the book. She scooped it up. 

“Some brother you turned out to be. You care more about your dumb mysteries than your family? Well then you can have 'em!” She slammed the book into his chest. 

Dipper fell backward – and then stopped falling. For a split second he hovered in the air, floating, and then he moved slowly up towards the eye of the portal. 

“Whoa whoa hey!” She jumped after him and missed. “Dipper, what's going on?!” 

He flailed. “Mabel! Mabel, help me!” 

“What do I do, what do I do!?” 

He was inches away from the light. She looked around frantically – a rope, a ladder, something, anything –  
_SZZZZZ!_ Dipper's trench coat made contact and the light hissed – it was up to his elbows, shoulders, face –  
“Dipper!”

“Mabel! Mabel, DO SOMETHING!” He threw the journal and she caught it as his body hit the portal. The light flared twice as bright and he sank into it, fingers still reaching. “MABEEEEEEL!” 

She dropped the book and leaped, but a huge blast of lightning threw her ten feet back, tumbling across the floor. Her head throbbed but she forced herself to sit up. 

“Dipper?”

Something clattered to the floor. 

Dipper's glasses. 

“No!” She scrambled for the portal and pounded every part of it she could reach. “Dipper, come back! I didn't mean it!” 

The portal was already powering down, she could hear the computers shutting off, even the weird squiggles around the eye were getting dimmer by the second. 

She rushed back to the stick thing and yanked with all her might. 

“I just got him back, I can't lose him again! _Please!_ ” 

The stick refused to budge. She strained until her hands slipped off and she hit her chin on it, hard. She stumbled and turned to face the portal. The empty socket stared down on her, dark, empty. 

“ _DIPPERRRR!_ ” 

 

The next few minutes were a blur. When she came back to herself she grabbed the journal and flipped frantically through the pages, but when she got to the part with the portal, it just said “Continued in Journal 2.” 

_There's – there are more journals? Wait, Dipper mentioned something about that. But how many others? Six? One? Eight!?_

She rushed from the computer room to the portal and back again. She tried reenacting the fight as best she could, slamming into things, hoping she was accidentally pressing the right buttons. She took off her jacket and burned it against the hot ridges on the console, just in case it needed some mystical burning thing to activate. She went back to the portal and threw the book across the caution tape, then herself. She pounded on the portal. It worked on TVs but didn't seem to work now. Nothing worked. 

She screamed. The lab distorted the echo until it sounded like distant laughter. 

 

Mabel shuffled to town. 

It had been weeks. She hadn't slept much. Or eaten. Or done much of anything, besides trying to get the portal to work. The only times she'd left the basement had been to get tools or some food. Dipper didn't have much, mostly canned beans, soda, and black jelly beans. Those had always been his favorite. Eating them made her want to throw up. 

He could be dead. 

But – she'd know, right? She hadn't known he was going through...whatever it was he'd been going through, but she'd know if he died. She would _know._

So she worked, and kept working, until she ran out of food. Even after that she kept going for another two days before she had to admit she needed brain juice. It had been a shock to come out of the cabin and see the sun actually shining. How was that even possible? Everything looked black and white and snowy, like the static on a television set and she was cold to the core. Even her brain felt numb. 

She'd left her motorcycle outside, side car attached. The extra wheel had kept her stable on the snowy roads, but it looked like the weight had emptied her tank faster than she'd thought it would. So she'd had to walk to town. 

When she reached the road she followed the sidewalks. She tried to pay attention to where she was going, watching alleys, avoiding stares. She pulled her sweater closer. She'd used the last yarn ball to knit it because her jacket was a badly burned mess. She'd knitted a ghost over the front of it. Dipper had loved...did love ghosts. 

She reached a really tiny grocery store. Some teenagers were doing teenage-type dancing outside. The music sounded muffled. She walked past them, went inside, and wandered the aisles until she found a loaf of bread. 

A cute old grandma smiled when she took it to the counter. “Just the bread then, stranger? That'll be 99 cents.” 

Mabel felt in her pants pocket and pulled out a couple empty sugar packets, some lint and a paper clip. Maybe she could trade it for some kind of...tiny doll or something?

“HEY! That's no stranger!” 

She jumped. Another lady around her age was standing on the other side of the counter, waiting her turn. The lady grinned. 

“That must be the mysterious scientist who lives in the woods!” 

The other people in the shop turned to look. 

Mabel stepped back, shrinking into the neck of her sweater. “No, no, you got the wrong person.”

“Yeah, I know you!” someone said. “You came to exorcise my house once! The Ghost Guru, right? Wow your hair got long.” 

“Very long,” said a man in a blue suit. “Very...enchanting.”

“I asked you to exorcise my face once,” another man whined. “But the cat whiskers still didn't go away...” 

A teenager in a ponytail leaned forward. “You had all those doctorates, right? Aren't you living at that old Shack in the woods? I've heard strange stories about it.” 

“Yeah! Mysterious lights and spooky experiments!”

Mabel's pulse jumped. “No, that wasn't –”

An old man with a name tag chuckled and wrapped an arm around the grandma. “Gosh, I'd pay anything to see what kinda crazy shenanigans you get up to in there.”

“Perhaps you could give us a tour?” Blue Suit suggested. “It must be an impressive museum you've build up. Surely you wouldn't want all the knowledge you've accumulated to go to waste. We'd be more than willing to pay for the privilege.”

“No, really, I –”

_Wait. Tours? Pay?_

Mabel glanced down at the lint. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and spun around, wearing her brightest smile. 

“Yes, I do give tours! Ten – I mean, fifteen bucks a person!” 

Immediately everyone crowded around, shoving fistfuls of cash into her hand. Mabel actually burst out laughing. All those nights testing what non-foods were edible and they were literally begging her to shut up and take her money! 

The first lady leaned forward again, brushing her hair back to reveal a pair of cat earrings and grinning eagerly. “So! What did you say your name was, Dr. Mystery?”

“Oh, I'm not a...” Her voice trailed away. “Pines,” she said finally. “Dr. Pines.” 

She led them back to the Shack, making up total nonsense on the way as part of the “tour.” She called a bird's nest the home of an elusive woodpeckerpecker, and pointed eagerly through the trees, explaining that the darker and more dappled areas were places where the mysterious plaidypus liked to blend in. 

“Enchanting,” the guy in the suit said, over and over, but he was looking at her every time. “Utterly enchanting.”

She threw open the door to the cabin. She'd cleared it out a bit, moving what she thought she'd need down to the portal room, but the place was dark and filthy Some kind of super computer stood in one corner and there was a table at the back with a three-eyed skull underneath, not to mention fish tanks and wooden crates full of old-timey artifacts and that skeleton she'd left up here because it was just too dang creepy to actually touch. 

Mabel ushered everyone all in grandly and then swept her arms like she was back at the circus introducing Mimi the Elephant. 

“Welcome, everyone, to a world of excitement and enchantment, horror and humor! We've got it all!” She gestured to the ceiling. “Mysterious fluid stains shaped like Abraham Lincoln's head!” Then to a massive stone tablet sitting in a crate. “The exact date of the end of the world! Buy your lottery tickets now, folks, Dusk to Dawn sells 'em in bulk!” 

Several tourists laughed. 

“Hey!” she said suddenly. She was sure she'd seen that blue-suited guy swipe something shiny and blue off a barrel. She marched over and shoved the barrel away. “No touching the merchandise!” 

“This stuff is for _sale?!_ ” someone else squealed. 

“Uh –”

“Not everything, I'm sure,” Blue Suit said smoothly. He took Mabel's hand and kissed it. “Something as enchanting as Ms. Mystery is utterly priceless.” 

“ _AWWWW!_ ” said the tourists. 

Mabel yanked her hand away, but she couldn't afford to make a scene, she needed money too badly. 

She ended up selling several pieces of trash as “slightly cursed magical artifacts” and promised a second tour in two hours, and another after that. The tourists left in clumps, showing off the junk they'd bought. 

“Two hours,” Blue Suit said, bowing himself out. “Until then, m'lady.” 

“Sure thing!” Mabel said cheerfully, and then slammed the door in his face. 

 

Now

 

“OH OH OH THAT WAS GIDEON WASN'T IT!” Stan shouted, jumping up. “What happened when he came back, did you punch him!? Please tell me you punched him!” 

“Gideon?” Dipper repeated, frowning and rubbing his chin. “Wait, Gideon Gleeful? I had a couple of run-ins with him in the past, he kept trying to steal the magical items I'd collected.”

“It's like a live DD&D game!” Ford whispered, actually drooling. 

Mabel rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, pretty sure that's why he suggested the tours in the first place. I kept catching him nicking stuff but he found my arrest warrants under the floorboard, so I couldn't exactly call the cops, but then he set fire to the Shack and I caught it on one of your ghosthunting cameras. Who knew paranoia would pay off, right?

“Anyway, apparently Dipper was such a recluse all I had to do was mutter some ghost mumbo-jumbo from that first journal and they thought I really was you. Susan actually asked me to try exorcising a ghost, but that got slightly explode-y. After that they called her Lazy Susan and we never spoke of it again. 

“I couldn't leave the house until I saved my brother, but I had to pay his mortgage somehow. So I ran a tourist trap and sold a bunch of weird creepy stuff I found lying around, and when that ran out I made my own exhibits. And so the Murder Hut was born! Later renamed the Mystery Shack. I'd finally found somewhere people tolerated me. For once, being an arts and crafts master paid off. The old me was dead, and I faked a car crash to prove it. I couldn't afford to have certain previous associates come back. By day I was Dr. Pines, Ms. Mystery! But by night, I was down in the basement, trying to bring the real Dr. Pines back.” She looked at Stan and Ford. “I couldn't risk anyone learning the truth and sabotaging my mission, so I lied to everyone. The townsfolk, your parents, even you kids.” 

Ford looked skeptical. “And they never seemed to notice Dr. Pines went from being a boy to a girl?” 

“The people of this town were ahead of their time for gender tolerance,” Ria said, nodding wisely. 

_Plus there's the Blind Eye_ , Stan thought. He looked up at Mabel. “So wait, the whole time we were here, before we were even born, you were lying your pants off to everyone just to save your brother.” 

She sighed heavily. “Yes. I was. I'm sorry. And no that does not make lying okay so you still can't do it.” 

“Oh come on!”

“ _I heard talking. It was coming from downstairs!_ ”

All five of them jumped and footsteps pounded overhead. 

Mabel gasped. “Oh no it's too late, the agents're coming for us!” 

“LET'S PUNCH 'EM!” Stan shouted, jumping to his feet. 

“You can't punch all your problems away!”

“It's worked so far!” 

Ria groaned. “I was so spellbound by the dramatic tale I forgot all about those dudes.”

“Wait – forget!” Ford dug through his jacket. “I think I know a way we may be able to defeat those agents!” 

He held up the memory gun to Dipper. 

He took it with a grin. “Of course! I don't know how you got ahold of one of these, but this is perfect!”

He rush to the lab and opened a fuse box set into the wall. The rest of them hurried over and Stan heard him muttering just like Ford did when he was under stress and thinking hard. 

“If I could just amplify the signal to a radio headset frequency...alright!” He stepped back and flipped a switch. “Now everyone, plug your ears! GET DOWN! NOW!” 

A horrible squeal ripped through the air. It was so loud it seemed to shoot right through the base of Stan's skull like serrated sword. 

The next thing he knew Ria was practically dragging him and Ford back up the staircase. He looked up and saw the edge of Dipper's trench coat flash through the doorway above them. It must've reminded Mabel a lot of the portal thing, because he heard a muffled squeak and then Ria dropped Stan flat on the floor to hold her back. 

“ _Ms. Pines, wait!_ ” 

Stan ducked under them and cracked open the vending machine so he could hear. Ford struggled to see and there was a brief but silent scuffle that ended with their heads stacked (including, at the top, Ria and Mabel's). They could all hear Dipper talking.

“Stand down, gentlemen! According to this very real report, the power surges in Gravity Falls were due to radiation from an unreported meteor shower. A total embarrassment for your whole department. Luckily, I'm here to take this mess off your hands. I'll need all of your floppy discs, and uh...eight-tracks. Right?”

Mustache Agent blinked several times. “Uh...everything about this case is contained on this drive...”

Chihuahua Agent handed Dipper something.

“Well what're you waiting for, a kiss on the cheek? Getoutta here before I have your butts court marshaled!” 

“Uh – yes, sir! Apologies, sir!” 

Within ten seconds every agent had packed up, rolled out, and even somehow restocked the Icee Pops. As soon as the coast was clear all four of them came barging out to the front porch. 

“THAT WAS AMAZING!” Stan and Ford shouted. 

“You totally conned those suckers!”

“The meteor shower was totally plausible!” 

“Sounded so stern I thought you were gonna hand out detentions!”

“Had a shower of meteors the three weeks ago –”

“CAN I HAVE THE THUMBDRIVE FOR BLACKMAIL?!”

“– swear the meteors were _SECRETLY ALIVE!_ ” 

Dipper chuckled. “Yeah, the F5 cluster was always full of pranksters. And please, call me Dipper.”

Ford turned beet-red and grinned. “Sure, Great-Uncle Dipper! So d'you mind if I ask you a couple billion questions about Gravity Falls!?”

“Ah. Well, uh –”

“Alright, kids,” Mabel cut in. “It's been a long day and me 'n' my brother have a lot of catching up to do. So why don't you hit the hay, huh?”

“But – it's the author!” Ford protested. “I've been waiting so long to ask questions about –”

“I _said._ Hit. The hay!” She reached over, spun them around, and shoved them gently towards the stairs. “And two icee pops maximum, Stanley, put the third back!”

Stan, who had already stuck three pops on his way from the vending machine, put the third back with a groan. 

 

After Ria excused herself, Mabel stood in front of the hallway mirror, Dipper at her side. She made a face and pulled at the bags under her eyes. 

“Ugh. When did we get so _old?_ ”

“Guess that makes me the good-looking twin,” Dipper teased. 

“Psh, you wish! You got actual gray hairs comin' outta your ears.” 

“Says the woman with teeth so rotted you probably eat sugar packets for a midnight snack.” 

“You act like I ever stopped.”

They laughed. 

Then Dipper took a deep breath. “Okay, Mabel, we need to talk.” 

Her stomach plummeted. “We...do?”

He turned and headed for the kitchen. Mabel trailed behind, her hands suddenly clammy. She'd been so happy to see him again, and they'd hugged so hard it wasn't even their usual awkward sibling hug. But retelling the story, reliving his anger, the way they'd shouted at each other barely half an hour ago in the basement... 

What if...

Her brother sat at the kitchen table but she remained standing, fidgeting anxiously. 

“You can sit down, you know,” he said, catching her eye. “I mean, it is my house, but...” He grinned and gestured to the knitted curtains. “It's your home, too.” 

Mabel collapsed into the nearest seat, sagging with relief. “I thought you were gonna kick me out.” 

Dipper looked startled. “Why in the multiverse would I do that?” 

“Gee, maybe 'cuz I ruined your chances to go to a big fancy college, ignored most of the letters you sent until it was life or death, and accidentally tossed you into a portal for thirty years?!” She put her head down on the table and drew in a shaky breath. 

“Hey don't be like that. You saved my butt back there. I'm the one who made mistakes.” His face darkened. “I can't believe I ever trusted that monster. And, your shoulder...”

She blinked at him. Then she jolted to her feet so fast the chair banged against the wall. 

“The smile – the eyes – I only had Journal three for a few days, are you saying that was _him?!_ ”

He nodded grimly. “But don't worry. I made absolutely sure Bill can never possess me again.” He rapped his knuckles against his skull and it made a metallic clanging sound. 

She blinked several times, then very slowly sat back down. “I... Okay, uh...that's a thing. But Dipper, questionable surgery aside, isn't he still out there? What if Bill comes after you some other way? Or someone else? We have to warn people!”

“ _No!_ ” The sudden force made her jump. “I mean it, Mabel, the less people who know about him, the better. There are people in the multiverse – it takes just _one wrong person_ to let him into the world. Just one power hungry megalomaniac obsessed with controlling others and the entire multiverse is lost! You didn't tell anyone about whim while I was gone, did you?!” 

“No, no, of course not! Not after what happened to –” She stopped short. It probably wasn't the best time to tell him how his girlfriend had gone nuts. “But we can't just not warn them!” 

“We won't need to. Not unless someone else has read the incantations in the cave. Bill can haunt the dreams of the townsfolk anyway, but he can't do anything unless someone actually reads the incantation. As long as I'm the only one who read it, and no one else has summoned him...we should be moderately safe.” 

“' _Moderately safe'?!_ ” she repeated. “Dipper, _moderately_ isn't enough. This isn't another dimension of sic-fi warriors, we've got family here! Like, actual tiny wiggly things with hopes and dreams! Ria and Dan and Seandra and the kids –” She stood up suddenly, a new horror dawning in her mind. “Ford's nightmares. I've heard him sometimes when – what if Bill's been haunting him all this time and I didn't even realize it?! I've gotta check on him –”

Dipper grabbed her hand. “Wait a minute! We can't go talking about this to anyone.” 

“Are you kidding?! Why not? You saw what that cheese wizard did to you, and you were a nerdy ghost genius with plenty of supernatural experience! We've at least got to warn our family before he tricks them, too!” 

“That won't happen,” Dipper said harshly. “Not if you trust me and do exactly what I say.” 

Mabel lunged, stopping with her face an inch from his, staring directly at him. Dipper flinched but otherwise sat firm, widening his eyes. He knew exactly what she was looking for. 

“No Bill,” she muttered softly, holding his gaze. “So you have no excuse for being such a reckless _jerk._ ” 

Dipper's face turned red and he shot to his feet, hands balled into fists. “I'm protecting my family! I'm trying to keep them out of this so they won't have to face what I did!” 

“By not telling them that they're in danger in the first place?!” 

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I learned that the hard way!”

“Yeah, when you were all by yourself with no one to warn you! You're still so hung up with your lone-wolf act that you want to hide the truth from your own family! Well forget it. I'm not taking the chance of them stumbling across that triangular nightmare with no clue what they're up against.” She turned sharply and strode for the door. 

“If you tell them I'll kick you out!” 

She stopped.

The room rang with silence. Mabel was still facing away from him, her shoulders rigid. 

“I-I don't want to do this,” Dipper said. “But you forced my hand. If you can't be trusted to do what's best, then you can leave right now.” 

Mabel turned slowly. Tears of fury and pain threatened to spill over her cheeks. When she finally spoke, her voice was a low growl. 

“You don't need to kick me out. When this summer is over, I'll leave myself. But you –” She stalked back to him and jabbed him in the chest. “You _stay away from the kids_. I don't want your Bill obsession getting them in danger. Because as far as I'm concerned, they're the only family I've got left.” 

 

Ford pulled the earbud out with a grunt of disgust. The wire led into a crack in the floorboard and ran through the vents, so theoretically he was supposed to hear what Mabel and Dipper were talking about. 

“Any luck?” Stan asked. 

“No, just that dumb head talking about llamas again. You?”

Stan grinned. He had his own ear pressed to their bedroom door. “Sounds like they're gonna buy us cars made of solid gold!” 

“I'm serious, Stan.” 

“It could happen!”

“Ugh, I can't stand this! I'm just gonna go down and ask him a few questions –”

“No, wait.” Stan grabbed his arm. “I, uh, I don't think they're getting along.”

Ford yanked his arm away but, instead of leaving, turned and dragged himself back to his bed, then flopped face-first on the covers. 

“I'm dying of Author deprivation,” he muttered. 

Normally his muffled blanket-talk got a sarcastic response. When none was forthcoming, he turned his head and saw Stan in the middle of the room, frowning at Gompers, who was snoozing on Stan's pillow. 

“You're not gonna get him to upchuck that thumb drive,” Ford said. 

“Huh? Oh, not that. It's just...it's weird, you know?” He looked back at the door. “I mean...I kinda liked it the way things were. Just us and Mabel and the near-constant lack of adult supervision.”

Ford opened his mouth to say something, the heard footsteps on the creaky stairs. They knew that slipper-shuffle pause outside their room, saw her shadow under the door. After a minute the footsteps moved past them and down the hall. They heard a door close. After that the house was eerily quiet. 

“...Eh, I'm sure it'll work out,” Ford said, a little too loudly. His stomach was starting to bother him, probably from floating in zero-G a couple hours earlier. 

“Sixer...you don't think we'll wind up like them, do you?”

“Conning tourists and traveling the multiverse?” Ford said drily. “Gee, that doesn't sound like us at all.”

“You know what I mean! They used to be best friends – heck, they were _hugging each other_ and now they're back to fighting all over again. It's stupid!” He grabbed his bat from against the wall and swung it a few times. 

Ford rolled over onto his side, facing the wall. “Just go to sleep, Stan.”

“Sixer.”

Ford ignored him. 

“Hey.”

Stan poked him with the bat. Ford fake-snored loudly. 

Then, at the count of five, Ford flipped over and slammed Stan face-first with his pillow. Stan, who'd been poised to stick a saliva-slimed finger in his ear, stumbled back with a yelp. 

“How'd you _do_ that?!”

Ford grinned and tapped his glasses. “Saw your reflection. I'm telling you, just go to sleep. In the morning I'll ask Dipper every question I've ever had about this town and you can pick his pockets while he's distracted. It'll be great, trust me!”

Stan sputtered out a laugh. “Alright, you win. Goodnight, stupid genius.”

“Goodnight, Stanley.”

 

Stan shut off the light and waited until he was sure his brother was asleep. Then he slowly slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room and down the hall to Mabel. He could hear her before he reached the door. 

She was crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was the longest chapter I have ever written for any fic ever. YAY! *dies*
> 
> Would anyone be interested in having a few journal pages instead of a short some week? To fill in the missing blanks like Journal 3 does? Let me know and I'll start journaling!
> 
> ALSO!! There will be a change in ~le schedule~! The new plan means I will post a short the week after the actual episode...and then right after that, the next episode!! That's right people we're gonna post EVERY WEEK!! (Let's see how long I can keep that up! Place your bets! Count your jalapenos! Place more bets!)
> 
> Thank you for reading! ^,^


	2. A Tale of Two Pines Short

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAH! THE JOURNALS!
> 
> *cough, cough*
> 
> OKAY! So here are the journal 3 entries immediately following Dipper's return! Sorry, there are just a few spelling errors, because I couldn't correct misspelled words they are in ink whyyy
> 
> Also! I wrote out the journal entries underneath in the usual AO3 text, so hopefully there should be no problem enjoying the pages even with my funky handwriting! @,@

Against all odds, 

**I'm Back**

 

I never thought in a thousand years that I would hold this book again. 

The weight of it in my hands and the smell of its parchment stirs so many memories... Afternoons in libraries, writing about the Corduroy Cabin...and, of course, the last time I held this book, in the terrible accident that changed my life. 

30 years ago, I got into a fight with my sister and was knocked through my own interdimensional portal to the multiverse

beyond. I was not myself for part of the fight, and my sister was injured. The thought of what could have happened still haunts me. 

Yet in spite of my warnings and the possibility of global catastrophe, my sister reactivated the portal and brought me back. While her intentions were good – they always are, that's half the problem – she put the entire multiverse at risk, and even worse, family members I didn't even know I had! Not to mention the fact that she'd become the target of a federal manhunt (a logical progression from her days in the principal's office!) Were it not for Chu's memory gun, I'd likely be writing from some secret government by now. Fortunately, as far as the government is concerned, our encounter never happened. 

For now, I must devote myself to more present problems, created by the woman responsible for nearly destroying the fabric of reality...

~~My Lab~~

**”The Mystery Shack”?!**

Unbelievable. Once a haven of scientific study, the cabin I built with my grant money has been transformed into a hokey glitter-dusted freak show that mocks everything about serious scientific research!

1) Sign \- Designed to catch attention and covered in glitter. “MysteryHack” is certainly accurate. 

2) Golf cart \- Clearly stolen from the mini golf park. Has gnome teeth marks in the bumper?!

3) Tourists \- I chose this spot for privacy and now there are advertisements everywhere! No wonder the agents found me!

4) Signage \- The outhouse I the only one that's accurate, but I removed it to protect people from face-stealing jerks. 

5) Weather Vane \- Keeps pointing Northwest. Weather vain!

**EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED!**

My library? A hall of taxidermy! What the heck is a “hampire”? My sister's cooking has not improved!

My thinking parlor? Now a grime-encrusted living room tackier than a T.M.I. Apple Rucker's restaurant! My T-rex skull has been turned into a coffee table!

Even my storage room is now an overpriced “gift shop” more cluttered than my old school trophy case! A tourist asked me if she could get a glow-in-the-dark ghost hand puppet, which was basically an old sock dipped in phosphors and studded with googly eyes!

These are the bane of my existence and I burned them all immediately. 

I felt like a ghost myself haunting a funhouse mirror version of my own life. (And I would know, having written three theses on ghosts and two on funhouse mirrors.) I will take bck my home and rebuild my scientific sanctuary as soon as the summer is over, but for now I must wait, for the sake of the summertime newcomers I find living and working here. My impressions of them are as follows. 

**My Sister Mabel**

~~HERO OR IDIOT?~~

I can't believe I was happy to see her! She's just as reckless, short-sighted, and corner-cutting as ever. Retelling the past certainly brought back memories, many of them painful, up to and including the sabotage of my high school science project. There were so many occasions where she mooched off my intellect or got us in trouble, but somehow I always managed to overlook it. Even when I came back through the portal, I was willing to ignore how she'd put the world in danger, and she was more than willing to take advantage of my sentimentality. 

1) Face \- Dad's nose and Mom's big ears

2) Gut \- I spent 30 years maintaining a vigorous exercise regime and diet. Mabel...hasn't. 

3) Suit – I have no idea where she found something this garish. 

4) Fez \- Dad's hat! Why did she put a shooting star on it?

5) Machinery \- held together mostly with duct tape!

But no more. She wanted to march upstairs and tell two 10-year-olds about the most powerful being in the multiverse, who just happens to be bent on utter destruction! I'd just gotten my family back, I wasn't going to risk their lives! The more people who know of Bill's existence, the greater the chances that they will discover how to contact him and become his unwilling puppets. 

I couldn't put my nephews or anyone else in jeopardy, so I gave Mabel an ultimatum. It was the only way to ensure that she wouldn't spread dangerous knowledge about Bill. She agreed, and further stated that she will be leaving at the end of the summer, at which point I will resume my solitary vigil against Bill, ensuring that no one else learns the truth of the Eldritch horrors of Gravity Falls. 

Frankly, I should be grateful that the damage done in that regard isn't far worse, given what Mabel has done to...

**Ria**

Upon initial observation, I believed her to be one of the hairless gopher people of the dimension Rodentus 7. I was shocked to discover that she is actually a human adult female. Quarantined for testing due to exposure to portal radiation. 

Findings:

1) Faints upon being reminded that Mabel referred to her as her “adoptive daughter”

2) Hides knitting needles and yarn somewhere on her person. Has taken out 3 pairs of needles so far. May actually be related to Mabel. 

3) Evidence of autolysis suggests surviving a zombie bite. When asked, she laughed and said, “That was one crazy party!”

4) Seems to have consumed a nearly infinite amount of cake. I may need to recheck my instruments.

~~That symbol on her shirt is so familiar...~~

**”Manly” Dan**

I recognized the name instantly! Mabel's other hired help includes the son of Wendy Corduroy, the local lumberjill who helped construct the cabin back in the 1980's. He shares her fiery red hair and enthusiasm for flannel. Ria had told him all about me; he greeted me with, “Hello, Pines II!” and proceeded to chop blocks of ice for the freezer. 

**Dan's Ax**

This ax looks exactly like the one I saw in a painting at the Northwest Manor! And I'm sure that painting was haunted!! What's the connection? And who choks ice with an ax?! ~~Am I losing my mind~~

**Stanley Pines**

At least there is some good news: I am a great-uncle! (Or “grunkle” as Mabel seems oddly insistent on saying.) Apparently, Shermie's grandkids have been staying with Mabel for the summer. (Or rather, they've been staying with “Dr. Pines” - clearly they thought she was me!)

I was instantly exasperated with Stanley's compulsive pickpocketing, although I had to admire his skill. Somehow he stole my watch right off my wrist and I never even felt it! I certainly could've used a talent like that when...”collecting” parts for my Quantum Destabilizer.

Stanley tried to cover for his thefts with painfully obvious lies. And then proceeded to expand on this with tales of his and his brother's “Stanventures.”

As if there was some kind of size-changing code in the crystals. Hah! Pretty sure I would've noticed that! He's as unskilled at lying as he is skilled at stealing.  
Speaking of which, I finally made him empty his pockets to make sure he did't steal a dangerous piece of interdimensional technology. The contents of his clothes are...disturbing.

1) Exactly 15 fake rubber spiders. 

2) A very confused field mouse. 

3) A miniature maraca with sharp dents in it, like a bird's beak

4) Three credit cards

5) Two driver's licenses (both bearing no resemblance to Stan whatsoever)

6) A miniature sculpture of a sailboat made entirely out of chewed gum

7) Fake toupee 

8) Functional, actually alive frog toe

9) Gnome hair

10) A very old gold coin. I am familiar with the design on the front, but there was a fish with its mouth open etched onto the back. It's difficult to see unless you're ~~The one from the prophecy~~ looking for it. 

How did all of this fit under his clothes?

**Stanford Pines**

Twins run in the family! Although that's the only resemlance I see between myself and this overager, unusually sweaty ~~10-year-old~~ 12-year-old. He asked questions so fast he actually made himself gag, and when I tested his heartrate for side effects of dimension fever, I found it going a mile a minute. When I managed to work in a question of my own, I discovered that HE was the one to find Journal 3! (I assume the circuitry had become unstable over time.) He is deeply interested in the paranormal, which is concerning, but luckily did not mention encounter with anything more dangerous than the Multibear, in spite of Mabel's negligence. (I wonder if Multibear still has that cassette player I loaned him...)

Observations:

1) Constantly sweating. Why doesn't he just take off his jacket?

2) Magnet gun kept pointing at his head, even when off. Fillings from cavities?

3) Very thin limbs. Almost noodle-y Were they weakened by exposure to Portal radiation?

4) Rank odor. Clearly hasn't bathed recently (or washed his clothes. Mabel should not be in charge of children!)

5) Six fingers on each hand. Perhaps I have more in common with him than I thought. More importantly, the sense of deja vu from these symbols...!

Added to Ciphers old nickname for me, and the strikingly familiar glasses I saw on Stanford's friend...could this be the prophecy..?

No. Even if it is, with the power to defeat Bill, I refuse to risk anyone's life or sanity. If that means spending the rest of my life standing alone against Bill, then so be it. This is something Mabel will never understand. But I must concern myself with her immaturity no longer. For now, I must address the troubles I fear are coming...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL THAT TOOK A SOLID 24 HOURS OF MY LIFE
> 
> (was super fun though >,< Hope everyone enjoyed it!)


	3. Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons

Stan lay on his back in the gift shop, an empty bag of toffee peanuts resting on his face. Sixer had his nose deep in Journal 2, and Mabel was reading a newspaper in her bathrobe. She wasn't even making them do child labor, since the Shack was temporarily “closed for repairs.” (The gravity thing uprooted several redwoods and replanted them upside-down in the front lawn. He'd thought she'd make an exhibit out of it, but apparently even she had her limits.)

The empty bag began to slide off his face and he blew it into the air. “I just ate a bag of toffee peanuts without using my hands! Lazy Tuesday, you are delivering in a big way!”

Mabel grinned. “Yeah! It's nice to have a day where nothing interesting happens, whatsoev–”

_CRASH!_

The vending machine slammed open. Smoke billowed into the room. Dipper stood in the doorway wearing electric gloves, a mutant one-eyed octopus writhing in one fist. All three of them leaped to their feet.

“Everybody get down!” Dipper shouted. “Don't let it taste human flesh!” 

He punched the thing on the head. It dropped off his hand with a squeal and scuttled rapidly across the floor. 

“What is it?” Ford yelped. 

Stan grabbed Mabel's paper and tried to whack it. “KILL IT, KILL IT!”

He nailed it just as Mabel yanked him back. The thing went sailing onto the counter and then scooted right across, Dipper in hot pursuit. He jumped up after it, did a half-flip off, and finally cornered the squid-thing in some boxes behind the snow globes. Stan hurried for a closer look. 

The octopus was poisonous green with eight legs and a huge eyeball right in the middle of its face. It scrunched itself up as Dipper approached, his electric gloves crackling. 

“Ten bucks on the squid!” Stan shouted. Mabel thwacked him with the paper. 

“Easy,” Dipper muttered. “Patience...aaaaand...”

The octopus glared, curled up its tentacles – and then its eye turned into a sharp-toothed hole shrieking with fury!

“GOTCHA!” 

Dipper pounced and the gloves crackled with lightning, casting creepy silhouettes of his trench coat and thrashing tentacles against the wall. When he stood up, the scorched squid hung limply and his hand. Dipper was smiling like, “ _Lookit, lookit! Can we put my science on the fridge?_ ”

“Aw, I wanted to sell it on eBoy,” Stan complained. 

Mabel scowled and pinched her nose. “Just get it out of here! Smells like if death could barf.” 

“Wait wait wait!” Ford hurried after him. “Grunkle Dipper, d'you need any help with that?! I've read all about these creatures in your journal, and I think I know how to –”

“No!” Dipper turned sharply. “I'm sorry, Stanford. But on the dark, weird road travel, I'm afraid you cannot follow.”

Ford's face fell. 

“Welp, call me for dinner!” 

Dipper grinned, pressed a button on his wrist, and the vending machine slowly swung shut, sealing him in the lab. 

“Maybe next time then?” Ford said hopefully. “Or not? Or never...”

Stan eyed the machine. “You think we could crack the new code? There's like, six buttons, couldn't be that hard.”

“Oh yes it could!” Mabel whacked them both. “Don't try it, I'm serious. My brother is a dangerous know-it-all, and the stuff he's messing with is even worse! Do yourself a favor and stay away from him!” 

“But, Grauntie Mabel, all summer long I've wanted to know who the author of the journal was. Now the guy lives in our basement and I can't even talk to him!” 

“Don't worry about what's in the basement. There's zero circulation and everything smells like feet. You belong up here with me and Stan!” 

“Yeah!” Stan grinned and held up a TV guide. “Plus, the season finale of Ducktective is this Friday! That's all the mystery we need this week! C'mon, quack with us, Sixer! QUACK QUACK! QUACK QUACK QUACK!” 

Mabel laughed and joined in. They started the world's smallest conga line around the shop, flapping their elbows, banging into stuff, and generally being obnoxious. Stan was loving it. 

But when Stan glanced back, his brother was still staring at the vending machine, watching the light pulsing behind it. 

 

“STAN!” Ford called, running across the lawn. “STAN STAN STAN!” 

He'd been moping around the Shack all day, and finally Stan had shoved a credit card into his hands and told him to spend it all in one place. (Ford hadn't asked where the card came from.) He hadn't had anything better to do, so he'd gone to town, and then saw something in the window of the local game shop, something he'd purchased semi-legally and now held tightly in his hands as he barged into the Shack. 

“YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT, I FOUND THE NEWEST EDITION OF...what are you doing?”

“Eh?” 

Gompers was sitting on the armchair like a person, while Stan was slouched against the T-Rex skull, slowly chewing its faded lace doily. 

“Do I wanna know?” Ford asked drily. 

“Mabel cut off my sugar supply and I'm suffering from withdrawals. Tell me your town trip included sugar packets.” 

He grinned. “Better! It's my favorite fantasy-talking, level-counting, statistics-and-graph paper involving game of all time!” He set down the box and tore it open. “DUNGEONS, DUNGEONS, AND MORE DUNGEONS!”

Gompers jumped off the chair and clomped out of the room. 

“Oh, sure, save yourself!” Stan called after him, then flopped face-first on the carpet. 

“C'mon, wanna play it with me? You were the one saying I should stop obsessing over the Author! What better way to do that than with another obsession?”

Ford flipped his brother over and held up the box. Probabilitor spread his hands behind his minions Hot Elf and Ogre Face, all three of whom looked down at a trio of players.

“Does the wizard eat the players and spare them from misery?”

“Sometimes, yeah!”

Stan eyed him. “Alright, how do you play?”

“The rules are simple!” He set down the box and pulled out a die. “First, you roll a 38-sided die to determine the level of each player's statistical analysis power orb. These orbs relate directly to the amount of power quadrants that your team has dominion over, which is inverse to the anti-quadrants in your quadrant satchel!”

“Do we get to bash ogre skulls?”

“Yes!”

Stan sat up. “Awesome!”

“Aaaand no. First, we make a graph!”

“Uuuuugh.” Stan dragged at his eyelids. “This is like Homework: the Game!”

“C'mon, Stan, Fiddleford's doing some dad-bonding thing and I need at least two people to play!”

“OH WOW WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT TWO PEOPLE!”

Stan rolled away as Ria walked into the room. Ford shot his brother a look, then turned to face her. 

“Hey, Ria! Up for a little game of D, D, & more D?”

She smiled but shook her head. “Sorry, chiquito, not even my abuelito could get into that pen and paper stuff. Besides, I'm rather preoccupied with FKLORP.”

“F-what?”

“FKLORP!” She held up her wrist, which had a pink knitted bracelet showing the initials. “Fabulous Knitters Legitimizing Organized Role Playing! It is where a passionate organization of craftspeople embrace their inner nerd and construct massive knitted props and donate them to inspire the inner nerd in all of us! Last week we donated an entire 12 by 30 foot pink castle cover to the local prison as part of their Artistic Outreach program, and today we're going to make the costumes that go with it. We even have a list of requests from the inmates!” 

Ford sighed. “Fine...thanks anyway.”

“Hey!” Mabel walked in and grabbed the box, grinning. “Is this the game that's mostly math and writing and isn't anything like the picture on the box!?”

Ford's face lit up. “It is, it totally is! D'you want to play it with me, Grauntie Mabel?!”

Mabel let out a derisive snort. “Look, Ford, I prefer to do my math calculating to figure out how many cat photos I need to wallpaper my bedroom. Besides...” She bent down and grabbed the guide still sitting in the box. “Only a game designed by nerds would have 'Charisma' as a power as a fantasy power.”

“Don't you make a living with charisma to sell people cheap junk?”

“Check this out!” She turned a page. “'When facing yon adversary, shield thyself under an elfen buttress!'” She completed the reading with hand gestures and an actual but-wiggle. 

Stan laughed. “Say it again!” 

“BUTTRESS!”

Stan laughed harder, banging the TV so much it kept switching channels.

“Hey!” Ford grabbed the game back, scowling. “Laugh all you want! You guys just aren't smart enough to understand it!” 

Ria smiled. “Sorry, Ford, but it does target a very specific audience. Well, I'm off to knit a sixe-XXL Punk Robin Hood Costume with a tiger-striped quiver and matching arrows. TO COLE'S GRANDMA'S LIVING ROOM!” 

She unsheathed a pair of knitting needles from her pocket and charged out the door. 

Ford tucked the game under his arm and followed her out, annoyed with everybody. Why was he always the outsider in his own family? Sure, Stan would listen to him while he “nerded out,” but it was always with a glazed look in his eye that made Ford feel like what he was saying wasn't really important. Well...well it was, and DD&D was just as legitimate as hand-knitted Role Playing. Even if he was the only one who liked it. 

He set up the game at the back porch, grumbling under his breath. The porch was all bashed up and there were bags of cement everywhere, so he had to sit on the weirdly moist dirt, but at least he wouldn't get made fun of. He could play the game as much as he wanted. 

By himself.

Alone.

“ _Baa-aa-aah._ ” 

Ford looked up and saw Gompers ambling over. 

“Oh, you want to play, too?” Ford took the die out again and pulled out a premade character sheet. “Okay, so the deal is you're walking through an enchanted forest trying to deliver a lost ring to a princess trapped in an unlocked tower so she won't become part of a battle royale full of minors. Want to do an inspection check?” He tossed the die and sent it clattering across the board. “Nice, you rolled a seventeen!”

The goat blinked each eye slowly. 

“ _Baa-aa-aah._ ”

“Aaaaand this is sad,” he sighed. “Maybe I should go back to obsessing over Seandra.”

Gompers suddenly stretched out his neck and chomped on the die. 

“Hey, give it back!” Ford yelped, grabbing for it. The goat held on, bleating through its teeth. “C'mon, Gompers, let – aw man!” 

The die popped out of the goat's mouth, flew straight through all twelve of Ford's fingers, and went skittering under the porch. Ford bent down to look. It looked like Ria had started to cement-patch it up, but there was still a pitch-black hole in the foundation of the Shack, and the die was poised right on the edge of the abyss. 

He got down on his elbows and scooched towards it, then reached out a hand. 

The ground crumbled instantly. Ford went tumbling into the darkness, screaming and frantically pinwheeling his arms. Piping and computer cords smacked his hands and face. He punched straight through a wood floor, hit a desk butt-first, and then face-planted on a cold metal floor.

It took a few seconds for his lungs to re-inflate. Finally he groaned and lifted his head. 

Light beamed down from the hole he'd made, illuminating a wall of blinking computer lights. A bottle of spilled ink lay to his left, and in front of him was Journal 2 and a broken jar holding the cycloptopus from earlier, which looked either asleep or unconscious. Ford stared at it for a full three seconds before it hit him. 

_He was in the lab!_

He scooped up the die and jumped to his feet, sweating with excitement. He was really here, look at those computers, he had to take a look, just a quick peek at – 

“Stanford, STOP!”

Ice zinged down his spine. His great-uncle strode forward, trench coat billowing, and grabbed Ford's shoulder. His knees turned to water. 

“Great-Uncle Ford!”

“What did I say about coming down here?!”

“I-I didn't mean –”

“My work is far too dangerous for a single living soul to spend even one second in – wait!” He let go and Ford remembered to breath. “Is that a 38-sided die from Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?!”

“Yes, it is!” Ford held up the die, stunned. “You – you know that game?”

The Author struck a heroic pose. “'With pen and paper, shield and sword –'”

“'Our quest shall be our sweet reward!'” Ford finished with him, and they laughed. 

Dipper took the die and grinned at it. “This is my favorite game in the whole multiverse! I can't believe they still make it.”

“They do! And I've been looking all over for someone to play with me!” He pulled the guide book out of his jacket and held it up. Dipper took it reverently.

“My boy...do you know what this means?”

Ford shook his head, eyes wide. Dipper knelt down so they were eye to eye. 

“We must stop everything I'm working on at once...and play!”

Ford squealed with excitement. Then he realized the squeal had actually come from the cycloptopus, which launched itself at the Author's face. He pulled it off with an nasty squelch.

“That's...going to leave a mark.”

 

Stan stood back and admired their work. 

He and Mabel had piled every edible junk food item they could find on the table in the den. Six liters of Pitt Cola, several jars of sugared bread crumbs, toffee peanuts, cheese boodles, donuts, marshmallows, gummi koalas, and several large containers of multicolored sprinkles. (Mabel had wanted to include her Juice. Stan dumped the juice in the trash and set fire to the trash.) 

He grinned. “Okay, I think we've got everything we need to watch the season finale of Ducktective tomorrow! I even made mouth ramps so we can pour food into our mouths without taking our eyes off the screen!”

He pulled a snack-loaded box from under the table, popped down the paper towel roll connected to it, and let the snacks pour into his mouth. 

“And I recreated the main character out of some spare taxidermy parts!” Mabel held up a turkey-headed badger topped with Ducktective's signature hat. “'I'm the Ducktective! Who stole my bread loaf? Quack quack!” 

The head wiggled too much and keeled over, hanging by a staple. Stan laughed. 

“That is so messed up, Sixer would _love_ that!” 

“Heh, yeah! Where is the little squirt anyway? Haven't seen him all afternoon.” 

He shrugged. “Probably nerding out in his lab.”

“Yeah. Oh! Almost forgot!” She snatched the food ramp out of his hand.

“Hey!”

“You want your sugar back? You know what to do!” 

He scowled. “Ma and Pa wouldn't even read the letter, why do I have to write one?” 

“'Cuz someone's gotta explain Dipper's arrival like a calm and responsible adult...and it AIN'T GONNA BE ME! Now go, go!” 

She weilded the turkey-badger like a weapon and chased him up the stairs. 

“I can escape through the roof, you know!” he called down to her. 

“Yeah and used Gompers to find all your secret snack stashes and replaced them with pig-themed stationary! Have fun!”

“You are SO getting slugs in your slippers!” he shouted, but she just danced away laughing. Knowing her she'd probably nail all the snails and treat them like pets. 

He slouched to his room. The heck with the stupid letter. He sure wasn't going to write it! Heck, he'd even play Dungeons and Death-By-Homework if it meant Ford would do it for him!

 _Heeeeey, not a bad idea!_ he thought to himself. 

_Thanks, self!_ he replied, and he climbed out the window to go find his brother. 

 

Ford and Dipper were sitting in the computer room down in the lab, the board game between them, both staring intently at the pieces. Ford flicked the die through his fingers while Dipper narrated the quest. 

“Alright, you enter the chamber. Princess Unattainabelle beckons you...but wait, it's a trap!” 

Ford jumped. 

“An illusion! Cast by Probabilitor the Annoying!” 

He brought out the cardboard display and propped it on the edge of the board. It showed the wizard in all his liver-spotted glory, with lavender skin, dark navy robes, and a serious thing for black lipstick. He was shooting fire out of each hand and cackling. 

Ford grinned. “You know his weaknesses, right?”

They recited in unison: “Prime statistical anomalies over 37 but not exceeding 51!”

They scooped up their die and rolled, leaning forward. Ford jumped up with a shout. 

“YES! In your FACE, you cardboard wizard!”

Dipper chuckled. “The old boy looks a little different than he did back in my day.”

Ford nodded, still grinning. “Yeah, they change the art every few years. Thankfully you missed the period where the creators of the game tried to make it 'cool.'” He used air quotes. “As in, Probabilitizzle in neon colors bright enough to stab your eyes. Must've been dark times, those nineties.”

Dipper shuddered. “Yeesh! Sounds like a good time to be stuck in between dimensions.”

Dimensions! Now was his chance!

Ford gathered his nerve. “G-great-Uncle Dipper, I've been meaning to ask you...where were you before you came out of the portal? What's the multiverse like? What've you been doing down here? Are you working on something behind that curtain?”

They both glanced up. The window of the computer room had been covered with a heavy, grease-stained tarp. 

“Stanford, it's best if you and the family stay away from that subject,” Dipper said finally. “Honestly I'm not sure any of you could handle the real answer.”

“But – but I could handle –” 

“Ah-ah-ah! But I can show you a little something I brought back with me.” He reached into his trench coat and took out a small brown bag, then dumped the contents into his hand. Out came a complete die set and a small black box, one side covered in alien writing. 

“What is it?” Ford whispered. 

“An infinity-sided die.”

He opened the box.

Nested in the black velvet was a huge glowing die, purple at its heart, pale blue at the edges. It had so many sides it was nearly a perfect sphere – and the sides were in a constant state of flux! Trees in trapezoids, hearts in hexagons, infinity signs in circles, never once repeating itself. 

“That's so cool!” Ford breathed. “And impossible!” 

Dipper grinned. “These things are outlawed in 9,000 dimensions. Want to know why? Look at these symbols!” They both leaned in. “Infinite sides mean infinite outcomes. If I rolled it, anything could happen. Our faces could melt into jelly. The world could turn into an egg! Or you could just roll an 8. Who knows.” 

“Did you ever use it?”

“Yes, but I learned some very unpleasant lessons about eyebrows in the process. That's why I keep it in this protective cheap plastic case. Now!” He set the box aside. “On to the game! You've got Probabilitor on the ropes!”

 

Stan lay curled under the covers, a pillow pressed over his head. He hadn't written the letter, and since Ria was off FKLORPING and Ford was nowhere around, he and Dan got roped into cleaning duty. When his brother finally had shown up, Stan was too tired and sugar-deprived to extort anything out of anybody. All he wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep. 

His brother, unfortunately, decided it would be an excellent time to nerd out. 

“Sweet, Moses, Ford!” Stan finally said, sitting up and throwing his pillow. “Could you quit talking for five seconds!? You've been saying dork words for hours!” 

Ford shoved the pillow off, smiling. “Sorry, Stan, I just gotta finish this dungeon.”

“That's graph pap– wait, same thing.”

“It is for DD&D! It's gonna totally stump Great-Uncle Ford tomorrow, I can't wait to see the look on his face!”

“ _That's_ where you were all day? I carried twenty-pound bags of cement by myself because you weren't there to help! And Mabel wanted me to write some dumb letter home! Haven't you spent enough time with Nerd Mabel?”

“No way! I thought the Author would be cool, but he's better than I imagined! We're talking Tesla levels of cool, Stanley! _Tesla!_ ” He turned back to the graph paper, adding, “And he doesn't make fun of me like you and Grauntie Mabel.” 

“Not out loud. Hey-O!” 

Stan waited for his brother's usual eye-roll, but Ford just hunched over his graphs and ignored him. 

“...Nah, you got me,” Stan said, laying back down and rolling over. He pulled the covers up until they covered his head. 

A cold feeling was sinking into his gut. Was this what would happen for the rest of the summer? Fiddleford was one thing, but Dipper was basically an older, science-ier version of Ford himself! What did Stan have to compete with that? He'd need something cooler or anomaly-er or – 

_That's it!_

Stan bolted straight up in bed. Ford didn't notice, but Stan no longer cared. He was already forming a plan. 

 

The next day crawled by until the early afternoon. Stan spent most of it holed up in his bedroom, avoiding chores, but finally he heard a knock at the door and rushed downstairs. 

“I GOT IT!” 

He slid down the banister, flung the door open and grinned. “You made it!” 

“Hey, Stan.” Cathy stepped inside, wearing a pale yellow sundress with a picture of Ducktective on the front. Charlie, on all fours, trotted in after her. “'Scuse my brother. He was getting picked on by some bullies and decided it would be a good idea to pee on their bikes. I caught him, but we don't have his clothes, so he's stuck like that until we get home.”

“If one of the bullies was named Crampelter, he had it coming.”

“Don't encourage him.”

“PUPPYYYYY!” 

Mabel thundered down the stairs and scooped up the dog. Charlie barked frantically. 

“Gently, please!” Cathy said quickly.

“Cathy, meet Mabel, human hug machine. Mabel, meet Cathy and Chew Toy.”

“His name's not –”

“He's cuuuuuuute!” Mabel squealed. “Who wants to find out who shot Duck-Tective? Who wants find out while eating an entire jar of peanut butter outta my hand? You do! Yes you do, yes you do!” 

The clock chimed at them. 

“Viewing positions, everyone!” Stan shouted, leaping for the living room, the others close behind. Then they reached the doorway and stopped short. 

The entire den was covered in graph paper and colored post-it notes, even the ceiling. Ford's conspiracy board stood in one corner, the TV screen was papered over with fake math dungeons, and the entire floor had a second carpet in the form of empty cracker boxes, graph paper, pencils, ogre money, more graph paper, and crumpled bits of paper. Sitting in the middle of the floor, like two nerd-birds in their nerd-nest, were Ford and Dipper, the DD&MD board laid out between them. 

Stan gave a shout and jumped with both feet onto the nearest grids. “AAAH! GRAPH PAPER! KILL IT, KILL IT!” Charlie joined in and began chewing everything in sight. 

Ford looked up. “Hey – cut it out!” he snapped, pushing the dog away. 

“'Scuse _you,_ ” Cathy snapped. 

“Ford!” Stan exclaimed, exasperated. “You said you were gonna watch Ducktective with us, not nerd out in the same general area! Can't you move the nerd junk somewhere else?”

“No dice!” Dipper said cheerfully. “We ran out of room in the basement and we're going for a world record! Now – DICE!” 

He rolled Ford's 38-sided die and it clattered across the board. 

“32! YES! 7000 points damage!” 

Ford laughed. “Oh, you got me!” 

“Am I missing something here?” Cathy whispered to Stan. 

“Yeah, my brother being a giant nerdbot.”

“Got that right,” Mabel growled, eyes narrowed. “Look, you want to break a record, Dipper? You already got it for world's nerdiest old man.”

“Hey, at least I'm not all keyed-up to watch a kid's show,” Dipper bit back. 

“I'll have you know that Duck-Tective has a big mystery element! And a lot of humor that goes over kids' heads!” 

Cathy nodded. “And my brother and I happen to like animals in human situations. For reasons.”

Stan glanced at the clock. “Mabel, do something, it's starting in just a few minutes!”

She strode across the graph-papered floor and reached for the television, but Dipper grabbed her wrist before she could touch the knob. 

“ _Move that and pay the price._ ”

She jerked her hand back. “Oh, what, fifty magical dwarf dollars?”

“Don't mock our fantastical monetary system!” 

“I'll mock all I want it's my TV room!” 

“It's _my house_ , you –” Dipper broke off, pinching his nose. Mabel's face had gone slate-gray and her mouth was tight. “Listen, Mabel, did it ever occur to you that if you joined us and applied yourself you might actually have fun?” He held up a brown bag and jiggled it. 

“'Applied my–'?! Now you listen to me! As long as I live, I will never –” She grabbed the bag.

“Ever –”

“Mabel wait –” 

“ _PLAY YOUR SMARTY-PANTS NERD GAME!_ ” 

“NO!” Dipper shouted, but she threw the bag as hard as she could. A bunch of die and a case flew out. The case cracked open like an egg, and a huge blue die flew out. It rolled right up to the cover of DD&D, lit up with blue lightning, and zapped the cardboard. 

_BANG!_

Stan leaped back. The living room was suddenly populated by an albino elf, goth Dundlebore, and an ogre with a serious underbite, backed by an enormous eagle the size of a full-grown pterodactyl. Cathy yelped and grabbed Charlie. Ford backed up into Stan, who grabbed his shoulder. 

Dundlebore leered at them with all five of his teeth. “MORTALS OF DIMENSION 46 APOSTROPHE BACKSLASH! KNEEL BEFORE ME AND...” He paused, rolled a die, and peered at it. “... _SNIVEL!_ ”

“THE HECK!?” Cathy shouted. 

The guy held up his staff, now topped with the glowy die. “I am Probabilitor! The greatest wizard in all mathology! ...Give or take an error of 0.4.”

“Uh, is this normal?” Stan asked, as they all stepped back. 

Ford swallowed. “Have you come to send us on the quest of a lifetime because we're the smartest players you've ever met?”

“You _are_ the smartest players I've ever met!” Dundlegoth agreed. “That's why I'm going to eat your brains to gain your intelligence. It's what I do.”

“It's his thing,” the ogre added. 

“What?!”

“ _Seize them!_ ” 

Dipper whipped back his trench coat and pulled out a weapon. “Your math is no match for my gun, you idiot!” 

“MATH RAY!” 

Dipper fired the gun. A bolt of pure lightning shot out. But the wizard raised his hands hand blasted pure math from his fingertips. The resulting explosion scorched Stan's retinas and sent him flying ten feet back. He pinned Mabel against the front door and slid to the floor, stunned. He forced his eyes open. Cathy and Charlie had ducked behind the armchair, but Ford and Dipper were lying on the living room floor. The ogre grabbed them both in his huge leathery fists. 

“Give 'em back!” Stan shouted, lurching forward – then ducked as the wizard shot a hole in the wall exactly where his face had been. 

“I'm not here to play games!” He shot a whole in the opposite wall, then gestured to the eagle, who grabbed the elf and the ogre. The eagle took off and the wizard flew out after him. “Now to the forest, for the ULTIMATE GAME!” 

“YOU JUST SAID – oh, forget it!” 

“Are they gonna be okay?” Cathy asked shrilly. 

Mabel made a so-so gesture. 

“We gotta save 'em,” Stan said, staring after them. “I mean, it'd be fine if he got a few bites in first. Even things out smartness-wise. But we still gotta get 'em back!” 

Mabel grunted. “Tried that. Didn't go well.” 

Charlie barked angrily, then lifted his leg to pee on Mabel. She yelped and sprang away. “Not inside, NOT INSIDE YOU WIN YOU WIN!” 

Stan laughed. 

“You try that and you're sleeping outside forever.” she threatened. “Alright, I guess if we have no choice, we'll go on an...epic wizard quest.” She said it in the tone reserved for “summer school.” “Everybody grab a weapon!”

Stan's face lit up. “Senseless violence! NOW we're talkin'!” 

Mabel pulled a half-dozen glitter bombs out of her jacket. He grabbed the bat from behind the chair. Cathy walked over and picked up the entire actual chair. 

They stared. 

She looked at them and shrugged. “ _You_ try carrying around a 90-pound brother all the time.”

“I am so trying that!” Stan said eagerly. “WE'RE COMING FOR YOU, NERDS ONE AND TWO!”

Charlie barked his agreement, sniffed vigorously at the ground, and then took off through the forest, the rest of them following close behind. 

 

The eagle had stopped in a small clearing deep within the forest. Probabilitor had sent the first ogre off to guard the path, then conjured two more, armed with a spiked mace and a double-headed ax. Then he'd conjured ropes and the ogres had bound Ford and Dipper swiftly and tightly to the nearest tree. Ford was tied so high his feet dangled in the air. It would've been kind of exciting, actually, except that the Author was just as stuck as he was, and Probabilitor kept staring at their skulls and drooling. The beginnings of panic churned in Ford's gut. 

_This is still a game, right? Like a PG-rated game with no actual gore? Could Probabilitor even get to my brain through the metal plate? Or will he just be all, 'Yay, free plates for my meal'? Or just magic out our brains? WHAT IF HE TRIES TO MAGIC OUT THE PLATE?!_

He broke out in a cold sweat. 

The wizard saw his panic and cackled, snapping his fingers. A tape measure appeared next to Dipper's head and started measuring their craniums. 

“With each brain I eat, I shall increase my enchan-telligence!” 

Dipper glared. “If my hands were free I'd break every part of your face.” 

But he just laughed and turned away. “The time has come! Hot Elf, ready the brain-cooking pot!” 

“Yes, Probabilitor,” Hot Elf sighed. He whipped his hair back, prepared a flaming arrow, and shot it at the wood under a giant cauldron. It caught fire. Immediately the liquid in the cauldron began to bubble and steam. 

Ford was glad he was tied so tightly, or he would've slid straight down and passed out. 

 

Charlie took the lead, sniffing out the path. Mabel followed close behind. Stan and Cathy brought up the rear. Stan's head was still pounding, although he couldn't tell if that was from the explosions or the lack of sugar. Probably both. He stifled a groan. 

_When I get Ford back I'm eating all his deserts for the rest of the summer._

“Oh, ew!” Cathy said, colliding with Stan. 

“Hey!”

“Sorry, sorry – I think a fairy just barfed on me?”

“They'll do that,” Mabel said, without looking back. 

“...I can't tell if she's serious.”

Stan shrugged. “A giant magic board game just kidnapped my family. It's a typical day.”

“You have more family back in Jersey!” Mabel called. 

“I still ain't writin' 'em!” Stan called back. 

“You don't like them?” Cathy asked, shifting her grip on the chair. “Don't tell me they're more nerds like Ford. I actually thought he'd be excited to see m– I mean my brother today, but he didn't say two words to me.” 

Stan sighed. “Yeah. That guy he was playing with? Long-lost relative and kind of my brother's idol. I thought having you over would get my brother's attention, but he's been ignoring everybody. Even me.”

“Ugh. My little bro can get like that, too. He gets a new game or a new chew toy, and I am reduced to the status of wall paper for the next two-three days. But, if family's that important to you, how come you don't want to write to the rest of them?”

Suddenly the huge ogre from earlier jumped down from a redwood and landed smack in the middle of the path, barely three inches from Charlie's nose. The dog yelped and scrambled behind his sister. The thing was twice as ugly up close, with dull yellow eyes and a thick pelt for a tunic reeking of B.O. 

“HALT!” the ogre boomed. 

“SHOWER!” Stan boomed back. 

“Yon interlopers are trespassing on the ancient forest of Probabilitor the wizard! If he wish to pass, ye must complete seven unworldly quests, each more difficult than the l–”

Cathy whacked it on the head with the chair. It collapsed. 

“ _That's_ for almost squishing my brother,” she said coolly. 

“Nice one, Cathy!” Mabel cheered. “Now everyone grab his gold belt and armband, Mabel needs money to fix the Shack!” 

“Shouldn't we check if it's, y'know...dead?”

“There's no cops in the forest, we'll take this to our graves!”

 

By now, Ford's shirt was thoroughly soaked in sweat. 

Dipper was staring at the pot as if that really could keep it from boiling. The wizard was practicing magicking the squishy bits out of half-rotten logs. Just imagining what that felt like made Ford light-headed and sick with fear. Even worse, the ogres seemed very, very interested in the trial runs. They were now looking back and forth between Ford and Dipper as if imagining their insides skewered and well-toasted. Ford's mouth went dry. This wasn't a stupid game anymore, they were going to _eat their actual organs!_

“What do we do, whatdowedo?!”

“Stop thinking, Stanford!” Dipper snapped. “The more wrinkly your brain gets, the more he'll want to eat it!” 

Probabilitor cackled and approached them, waving his staff. “And now, a little math problem! When I subtract your _brains_ from your _skulls_ ” – he hit them both on the cranium, hard – “add salt, and divide your family, what's the remainder?”

“ _YOUR BUTT!_ ” 

The wizard blinked. “What? My butt's not part of the equation!”

Mabel, Stan, Cathy, and Charlie plowed through the bushes, brandishing weapons and bellowing war cries. 

“Stanley!” Ford shouted, sagging with relief. 

Probabilitor scowled. “Drat! How did you make it past my one guard?!”

“Weaponized furniture,” Cathy said smugly. 

“Very well. There's only one way you can save your family.” He swept his staff, carving electric runes in the air. “You...must defeat me...in Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons, REAL LIFE EDITION!” 

 

Up until that moment, Stan was feeling pretty good. 

Sure, his brother was tied to a tree, looking seriously wigged out, and Dip 'n' Dots over there didn't look like he'd been much help. On the other hand, Stan had been sugar-deprived for two days straight, he was holding a bat, and there were two ogres and a goth wannabe who made perfect targets for misplaced aggression.

And then a glowing circle appeared under the wizard's feet and he slammed it with his staff. 

Stan jumped back with a shout as the circle expanded, flooding the whole clearing with a glowing pink grid pattern, then contracted with a crack into a small holographic castle, exactly the size of a DD&D board. 

“Hey! The heck was that, did he just try to turn me into math?!”

Probabilitor giggled and opened his hands. The ogre guards appeared on his palms and sank to the board. 

“I choose _my_ characters, versus... _yours!_ ” 

He snapped his fingers. 

Glowing light appeared around Dipper and Ford, but before Stan could say anything they vanished and reappeared in the wizard's very wrinkly palm. His grunkle wore a dark brown tunic under a light brown robe, both secured by a belt, and he was holding an oaken staff that looked great for whacking people on the head. 

His brother, on the other hand...

“Sweet Moses, Sixer,” he managed, turning red in the face.

“What, what?”

He looked down. 

Ford wore a flowing cape, green tights and a tunic short enough to violate several school dress codes. 

“Oh, noooo,” he moaned. “I'm the D&D version of Robin!” 

Stan burst out laughing. 

The wizard dumped them on the board and waved his hands. He, Stan, and Mabel floated in the center of the clearing around the board. 

“Oh, no, Stan Pines does _not_ do math homework in summer!” 

“Yeah! Can't we have a knitting contest or something?”

“Aw, c'mon,” the wizard whined. “This game is a lot of fun. I had my mom pack me a lunch! See?”

He pulled a lunch bag out of nowhere, sat down, and dumped it in his lap. There was a bag of apple slices, a sandwich, and three kinds of teeth-rotting candy bars. One of them was actually called “Teeth Rotters.”

“ _He_ gets to eat sugar,” Stan muttered. 

“ _He's_ still in touch with his parents,” Mabel retorted. “Also he has five teeth and a problem with cannibalism, so not your best argument.”

“Nuts to that!” He yanked three sticks of gum in his pants pocket and jammed them into his mouth. 

“Stanley Pines!”

“Whaaat? I'm half-dead and need the brain food!”

“Bad word choice, _bad word choice!_ ” Ford called. 

The wizard grinned. “The game is a battle royale. We help our characters by casting spells determined by rolls of the dice. If you win, I go back to my own dimension! If I win...” He leered down. “ _I EAT THEIR BRAINS!_ ”

Ford gulped. “Uh, guys? I'm not sure if this is such a good –”

“DEAL!” Mabel shouted. 

“Oh boy.” 

The wizard spread his arms. “ _Let the game begin!_ ” 

He rolled a die the size of the Shack across the board, right between the two ogres. “Thirteen! ATTACK!” 

The ogres lunged forward. Ford and Dipper leaped to the side, barely avoiding getting their heads bashed in. Ford spun around and sprinted from his ogre, who swung an ax and nearly gave him a buzz cut. 

“HEY!” Stan reached for Ford, but pink lighting shocked his arm and numbed him to the elbow. “OW! What do we do, what're our moves?!” 

“There are no moves, you make them up!” Ford called, then ran straight through his ogre's legs.

Mabel blinked. “What – really?”

“Yes!” Dipper shouted. “I tried to tell you! This game involves math! But also risk! And imagination!” 

“'Risk?'” 

“'Imagination?'” 

The ogres had them cornered. Ford backed up into Dipper, who put a hand on his shoulder and scowled up. The ogres moved in, raised their weapons – 

“SHIELD OF SHIELDING!” Stan bellowed, hurling the die like pitching a baseball. It skittered across the board and a blue rune-covered shield blazed into existence right as the ogres swung down. It hit the shield and bounced off with a clang. 

“YES!” Ford shouted. 

Stan whooped and nudged Mabel with an elbow. “C'mon, make something up, it's just like lying!”

The wizard snarled. “Shield of shielding reversal spell!” 

He rolled the die and the shield evaporated. The ogres snarled and marched forward, reaching for them with thick grubby fingers. 

Mabel grabbed for the die. “I cast Giggle Time Bouncy-Boots!” 

Bright pink, googly-eyed, spring-loaded boots had appeared on Ford's and Dipper's feet. 

“WOOHOO!” Ford shouted, springing away. Dipper laughed, jumped even higher than Ford, and bounced right off the head of one of the ogres. 

“Hot flame-y sword!” Stan called. Burning blades appeared in their hands. 

“SUPER hot flame-y sword!” Mabel added, and both swords doubled in size. Ford laughed, bounced after his ogre, and sliced it in half. It vanished instantly. Dipper laughed as his own ogre evaporated from a thrust to the chest. 

Stan cheered. “SENSELESS VIOLENCE WINS AGAIN!” 

The wizard's eyes flashed. “Drat you! You'll never outrun my – OGRE-NADO! It is what it sounds like!” 

He rolled the die and a huge twister unfurled on the far side of the board, completely made of ogre-faces and ogre-weapons. The sheer wind power snuffed their blades and then ripped them clean out of their hands, sending them flying to the wall behind them and well out of reach. 

“RUN!” Dipper bellowed. He and Ford dashed across the board. There was a divider in the middle of the board, with a small arch just big enough for them both to fit. But the tornado was faster than the ogres. Even worse, Ford was tiring. The storm pulled his brother's hair, then cape – his feet were barely hitting the ground – 

“I cast CENTAUR-TAUR!” Stan shouted. “HYEAAAH!” 

He rolled the die. A made-up monstrosity shot out, two horses stacked on top of each other, facing opposite directions and connected by a single thick neck. 

Mabel grinned. “Stan, I am so confused and so proud right now!” 

The beast galloped towards Ford, then Dipper. They leapt onto its backs and it galloped toward the arch. The ogrenado was right behind them, inches away. Stan and Mabel cheered them on. They crossed the threshold. The monster disappeared, unable to fit. Ford and Dipper went sprawling. The ogrenado hit the barrier at full force, crashed straight through it – and then immediately disintegrated! Ogres rained down on the board like really ugly snowflakes. 

Ford and Dipper jumped to their feet, cheering with Stan and Mabel. 

“That was awesome, Stan!” Ford shouted. 

Dipper chuckled and turned to face Ford. Then suddenly a leathery, three-fingered hand appeared out of nowhere and lifted them up. 

“What the cheese?!” Stan yelped. 

The thing holding his family was practically the size of the entire board, with a single eye over a huge triangular maw, with a smaller mouth where the uvula would be, bracketed by undulating tongues. Three sets of veined and tumored horns jutted from its head. Its bat-like wings were the color of an infected wound, and its other six limbs contorted at unnatural angles. The hand currently squeezing them had thick gray nails crusted with dried fluids, and based on the stench, Stan really didn't want to know what they were. 

As soon as they were level with the eye, Ford turned chalk-white. 

The wizard cackled. “Oh yes, I was saving the worst for last!” 

“The impossibeast!” Dipper said. “Hey I thought they banned this character!”

“Think again! I'm playing the controversial 1991-1992 Edition!” 

The beast slammed them flat against the wall.

“I'll think of some weapons!” Mabel cried.

Dipper shook his head. “You don't understand. This is the most powerful monster in the game! It can only be defeated by rolling a perfect 38. And the odds of that are...”

“One in thirty-eight, duh!” Stan swiped the die from Mabel. “Long odds are nothing, when you gamble at Sal's every Tuesday!” 

He shook the die with both hands, once by his left ear, once by his right. Just a little sleight of hand and...

“Alright, Stan, you can do this,” Stan muttered. “Papa need a new pair of...TWINS!”

He rolled. It felt like the die was falling in slow motion. It hit the board...bounced across it...slowed down right under Probabilitor's long bony nose...then landed on – 

“NO!” 

“YES!” Stan cried. “Sorry not sorry, nerd wizard! All your smarts are no match for dumb luck and sugar cravings! I CALL DEATH MUFFINS!” 

Ford and Dipper held up their hands and bright pink cupcakes appeared on their palms, each topped with lit dynamite. They chucked the doomcakes into the monster's maw. 

It swallowed. 

For a second nothing happened. Then the monster's face ballooned. There was a split-second of surprise before the entire beast exploded in a nuclear mushroom of sugar-scented ash. 

Ford and Dipper disappeared from the game and there was a flash of pink light on either side. Stan looked up to see his bro-bro land in a crouch, extra non-death cupcake in hand. 

“SEAGULL POUNCE!” Stan shouted, and tackled him. Ford surrendered his cupcake, laughing, and the two of them got to their feet. Stan mashed the sugar into his face. Dipper was standing up on the other side of the board, grinning and trying to fend off a small brown dog, who was currently leaping for the treat. 

Ford frowned slightly. “Wait...isn't that Charlie? And Cathy! When did you guys get here?”

She gave him a look. “We've literally been here the whole time.”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.”

Hot Elf cleared his throat. “The game is like, over. Excelsi-whatever.”

“Noooo!” Probabilitor howled. They looked over and saw the game, the trolls, the elf, even the cauldron beginning to dissolve into a digital pink grid. “I'm returning to my own dimension! I'm turning into pure math! _What are the ooooooodds?!_ ”

Cathy blinked. “Huh.”

“You guys were amazing!” Ford said, grinning at Stan and Mabel. “How'd you know you would win?”

“Hey, a gambler never reveals his secrets,” Stan said, going to retrieve the die. It was still a little sticky with his gum when he pulled it up. He stuck it in his pocket. “Gotta say, that game was way more violent than I thought it would be!”

“I hadn't noticed,” Ford said drily. 

Mabel chuckled awkwardly, then knelt down to meet Ford's eyes. “Listen, I'm sorry for makin' fun of your game, kiddo. Sure, it might be too nerdy for me, but it's just the right amount of nerdy for you and my brother. And if you two wanna to hang out sometimes, I won't get in your way.”

He grinned. “Thanks, Mabel. I hope you'll join us now and then, though.”

“Can we just go already,” Stan grumbled, looking at his feet. 

Cathy nodded. “Yeah, we can still catch the second showing of Ducktective. I don't know about you guys, but after all that, I could use a little mindless fun.”

“Too soon,” Ford groaned. 

They laughed and started back towards the Shack, Stan trailing behind. 

 

Two hours later they'd returned to the Shack. Ria had come over after her knitting escapade, and she, Cathy, and Charlie were grabbing snacks from the kitchen. Stan had gone upstairs to replenish his emergency gum supply. He headed back down to join them. 

Mabel jumped out from behind the dodo. “BOO!”

“GYAH! I wasn't doing anything! I definitely wasn't stashing gum in Ford's pillowcase because it's the last place you'd look!” 

“Duly noted!” she said cheerfully. “But listen, Stanley...I'm sorry for trying to force you to write to your parents.”

He blinked. “You are?”

“Something like that should come from the heart, not because someone told you to do it. It kinda bothers me that you're so against writing them, though. Family's important. I want you to stay close to yours. But everyone's got different ways of showing that they care, and I shouldn't be forcing you to do it a certain way.”

He ducked his head. He really didn't care, but the thought felt like a thorn in his gut, and he didn't want to see the look on Mabel's face if he said it out loud. 

“It's just...sometimes it's easier to get a break, you know?” he mumbled instead. “Getting bossed around by someone who's not your parents. Even if they practically starve you with a no-sugar ban.” 

She booped him on the nose. “Ban retracted. I already set out the sna – whoa!” 

“SUGAAAR!” 

He charged straight past her and into the living room – where he promptly tripped and fell flat on his face. 

“Ow!”

Stan spat out a mouth full of carpet glitter and rolled over. Ford was sitting in front of the yellow armchair, rubbing his shin. 

“Sixer?!”

“And you're surprised because?”

“You – I thought – weren't you guys talking about some woods hike all the way back?”

“Yeah, but I sort of asked if I could watch Ducktective with you fir–”

The rest of whatever he said was lost as Stan tackled him, this time on purpose. They rolled around for a minute, Ford laughing about how he had no more cupcakes, he promised, before Charlie bounded into the room and joined in the tumble. 

“So beautiful,” Ria said. Stan looked up to see her wiping an eye with her free hand, while the other was laden with food guaranteed to create cavities in six to eight hours. 

He grinned. “Not as beautiful as that snack tray!”

“Yeah, yeah, let's watch the show, huh?” Mabel said, coming in with Cathy. 

They quickly settled in. Cathy, Ria, and Charlie took the floor, and Stan and Ford sat on each of Mabel's knees, chomping through stick after stick of Pixie Powder. Now this was how you spent a lazy summer day. 

 

Ford hummed to himself as he headed down the stairs to the lab. Great-Uncle Dipper had given him the new code. Ducktective had been a nice break from nearly getting eaten (although Ria had totally been right about the twin theory) but he was pretty excited about hanging out some more with the Author himself. 

When he reached the lab, Dipper was sitting at the desk, carefully placing the Infinity Die in a glass tube. He turned when he heard Ford come in. 

“Ah, perfect timing.” He got up and opened a metal locker on the far wall. “Wanted to show you where I'm keeping this. It'll be here in case you ever need it.”

“Wow – really? Even though I...kind of got us into this with the board game...? I almost got us eaten.” It was less scary now that it was over, but still. 

Dipper chuckled. “Ah, we both just got carried away. I guess we'd both gone for a while without a friend.” 

Ford let out the tiniest squeak. His Great-Uncle, _The Author_ considered him a friend?!

“I would've gotten us out of there myself, but it figures it'd be the one time I'd taken off my wrist watch, trying to avoid your brother's penchant for petty theft. Technology like that shouldn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Speaking of which...” His uncle hunched his shoulders. “Stanford, can I show you something?”

Ford nodded frantically. 

“You asked me earlier what I was working on. Well...” He strode to the tarp and yanked it down. “I dismantled the Portal.”

The triangular portal itself had been roughly cut into three heavily dented pieces, the ground had been scraped clean of all metal scraps larger than a pebble, and dusty shafts of light from the damaged ceiling revealed that all the cords and pipes lining the walls had been ruthlessly stripped away. Upon closer inspection, some of the ground even looked freshly turned, as if anything under the ground had also been dug up and summarily dispatched. Larger pieces of equipment still leaned against the walls, but they were connected to nothing, not even each other, and the runes had been literally torched off of all of them. 

“An interdimensional gateway is far too dangerous for the world it leads into,” Dipper said. “That's why I was mad at Mabel for using it. She saved me but, as I feared, the instability of the machine created this.” He slid open a small compartment in the desk and pulled something out. 

Ford's jaw dropped. 

At first glance, it looked like one of Mabel's snow globes. But trapped within the crystal sphere was what looked like a miniature galaxy, an inky blackness flecked with stars that moved and rippled without ever touching the edges of its prison, a multitude of constellations in a liquid night. 

“What is it?” he whispered. 

“An interdimensional rift.”

“An in – wait, so _anything_ could come through –”

“No, I've contained it for now, but it's incredibly dangerous.” He put a hand on Ford's shoulder. “Stanford, I don't want you to tell _anyone_ about this. Not Mabel, not even your brother. You understand?”

He nodded, mouth dry. 

“In my time, I've made many powerful enemies, but I'm trusting you with this secret.”

“I won't let you down, I promise!” 

Dipper smiled. “Good. Now get the supplies we discussed and I'll meet you upstairs.”

“Yes, Great-Uncle Dipper!” 

Ford turned and raced back to the elevator. His shoulder tingled and his heart felt about ready to burst through his chest. The Author trusted him, actually _trusted_ him with a secret!

He glanced back in time to see Dipper carefully placing the rift in a separate cabinet and locking it securely. Then the elevator closed its grate and began the slow ascent. 

It didn't seem to matter that Bill could get through. Because, Ford realized, he trusted his Great-Uncle, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far we are ON TRACK BABY! WOOHOO!! See you next Friday!!


	4. Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons Short

Ford was glad Stan and Mabel had fallen asleep, since Mabel probably would've stopped him from going with Dipper, and Stan would've tried to tag along. (Stan was great and all, but he didn't take science as seriously as the Author.) He and Ria had tucked them both in, Ria had taken their other guests home, and Ford had rushed upstairs to cram his pockets full of supplies before meeting his great-uncle in the Gift Shop. They'd hiked to the lake, cut a wide arc towards the waterfall, and were now heading steadily deeper into the tunnels behind it, each holding a squirming Geodite in their hands. Dipper's Geodite was a full-grown, multi-colored specimen, but Ford's was just a baby and glowed a single shade of deep violet. 

“So?” Ford asked eagerly, as they passed through a tunnel rimmed with crystals. He squeezed his Geodite too hard and it clacked at him. “Where are we going, what's the mission?”

Dipper glanced back and grinned. “We're collecting moonstones, my boy. And I don't mean your average sodium potassium aluminum silicate, either! These stones and are found only in the recesses of a network of caves hidden deep below the lake.”

“Oh oh oh – Journal 2, I remember those! 'Perfect miniatures of the actual moon, and parts of their surface glow or turn pitch-black based on the current lunar cycle!'”

He chuckled. “Impressive memory! But there are a few things I didn't write into my journal, and the first is that the moonstones only form on a full blue moon. Which happens to be tonight. My own supply of moonstones has vanished, no doubt into some tourist's pockets, and I'll need a full supply in the days ahead.” 

“Where do we find the moonstones?” Ford asked, looking around. The deeper they went, the more the tunnels seemed weirdly familiar. “I wouldn't think they'd be so far underground. Wouldn't they be somewhere the actual moon could see them?”

“An excellent question, but one I didn't have time to research before other experiments drew my attention. Quietly, now, there are certain creatures in the tunnels we wouldn't want to disturb.”

He lowered his voice. “Like what?”

“Mole-people, mostly. They've been at war with the sewer alligators for centuries and they don't appreciate sewer-users invading their caves. Not to worry, the actual moonstone cave has very little supernatural inhabitants, especially on the night of a full moon. Most creatures that love shadow abhor the light. Ah, perfect!” 

Dipper and Ford stepped through a narrow opening between two shelfs of rock. Ford gasped. 

The tunnel opened into a massive cave almost as big as the parlor in the Northwest Mansion. Their Geodites didn't shine light all the way to the roof of the cave, but the walls where their light did reach looked like a massive opalescent geode, as if they'd been thoroughly dusted with Mabel's glitter. They curved down to a floor covered in alien flora, with ferns as pale as ivory feathered over smaller plants whose leaves were as round and luminous as flattened pearls. The vegetation formed a perfect circle around the exact center of the cave, where a shallow pool of crystal-clear water was carved into the earth. 

“It's amazing!” Ford breathed. “But, wait...”

“This way,” Dipper said, pushing through the ferns. Ford hurried in his wake, the glow from his Geodite turning all the plants a pearly purple. 

They reached the basin and Dipper knelt. Ford crouched next to him. 

“What're we –”

“Wait for it,” Dipper said, holding up a finger. He checked his wristwatch. “The full blue moon will reach its zenith in three...two...one.” 

He pointed. 

Ford leaned forward, confused, holding out his Geodite. The water was so pitch-black Ford couldn't even tell how deep it was, or if there was anything inside it. Then points of light pricked the bottom of the basin two feet down. The points grew and Ford suddenly realized the points were actually balls of light – balls of rock – boiling at the bottom like bubbles, more and more of them, growing bigger until he could see pocks and craters and – 

“ _Moonstones!_ ” Ford shouted, and Dipper laughed. “They're perfect, look at the detail on those things! Here's Copernicus! That one's big enough to see Picard, it's even perfectly to scale! Sweet Sagan I'll bet we can even use these to study the _dark side of the moon,_ I can't believe we –”

_Greee?_

They both froze. The back of Ford's neck prickled. Very, very slowly, they looked up. 

There were at least a dozen moonstones now, still foaming and growing under the water. They were glowing enough to finally illuminate the roof of the cave. It was completely covered in giant bats. 

And all of them were wide awake. 

_Greee?_

“Stay calm,” Dipper said, voice low. “Those are fruit bats. They must've started a new colony here. Aggressive, but not territorial. They'll only attack if they see food –”

_Clack!_

Ford looked down. He'd been squeezing his Geodite too hard again. And it now occurred to him that its glowing purple crystals made it look exactly like a big, plump, very juicy blackberry. 

_GREEEEE!_

The bats lunged from the ceiling, all of them shooting straight for Ford, eyes glowing red. 

Ford hurled himself back with a shout but the Geodite scrambled after him and dove into his jacket. The bats were on him, scratching, tearing, screeching so loudly Ford could feel it in his skull. He swung out blindly and something bit his arm and he curled up, covering his head – 

“ _OFF!_ ” 

There was a nasty thud and more screeching, then something grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hurled him into the water. 

“Get the moonstones, I'll cover you!” 

“Great-Uncle Dipper!” 

“Hurry!” 

Dipper spun around, drawing his gun and firing over and over at the bats. The rays stunned them like a taser and they dropped as soon as they were hit, but there were dozens of them and they didn't stay down long. Ford scrambled to jam as many moonstones as he could into his jacket next to the trembling Geodite, thankful for once for his extra digits. 

“Agh!” 

He looked up and saw a bat bite Dipper clean through his shoulder. He dropped the gun and another bat raked his at his skull, forcing him to duck – and then two powerful feet gripped Ford's arms and yanked him into the air. 

“GREAT-UNCLE DIPPER!” 

“It won't hurt you!” Dipper cried, punching his assailants in their ugly snouts. “Gag it with the Geodite! It wants it anyway, and the thing's made of rock, he'll be fine!” 

“Get off me!” Ford shouted, twisting and kicking. It screeched and swung him into a wall, hard, then threw him on a narrow ten-foot ledge. Ford's head and arms throbbed but he rolled away instantly, rewarded for his quick-thinking by a thud exactly where he'd been a second earlier. He looked up. The bat was way bigger than the other ones had been – at least as tall as a person, with thick brown fur, saber-like fangs and wings the color of dried blood. 

It lunged. 

He plunged his hand into his jacket and grabbed the Geodite by the leg, then smacked the bat clean across the face with it. He lost his grip on it and it landed on the wall, then scurried through a crack. Ford looked at the bat. 

“Uh, oops?” 

Its eyes blazed and shot straight for his neck. Ford screamed and threw himself aside, accidentally rolling over the ledge. He caught himself and the bat reached down and grabbed his shoulder. With a yell Ford plunged his hand into his pants pocket, grabbed the first thing he could and swung as hard as he could. 

The silver mirror caught the bat squarely in its left eye. It reared back with a scream. Ford swung his arm back to strike, glanced at the mirror – 

“Not a bat!” he shouted. “Great-Uncle Dipper! Not a bat, NOT A BAT!” 

The vampire swung down over the ledge and gripped him in its wings, crushing out a scream. It hissed, its one good eye glaring bloody murder, then opened its mouth wide, fangs aimed for his throat – 

Air rushed into his lungs and he free-fell through the air. He looked up in time to see the bat writhing from a burn in its back, then Dipper caught him and they were running full-tilt for the opening, dodging and punching the few bats who still thought they had food. 

“Go go go!” Ford shouted, squeezing through the opening. 

They tore down the tunnel. An echoing screech made him look back. The vampire stuck its ugly bat-head through the opening and swiveled like an owl. Its eye literally glowed in the dark. 

“It's coming!” 

“This way!” 

Dipper took a hard left and they sprinted down a tunnel that spiraled like a snail shell, then out another opening into a massive tunnel twenty feet wide.

“Wingspan!” Ford gasped. 

“I know, trust me!” 

_GREEEEEEE!_

Air whipped around their faces and Ford could almost feel the claws on the back of his neck. Suddenly the tunnel curved left but Dipper went right, grabbing Ford's arm. He yelled as they plunge down through a nearly-invisible hole. There was a satisfying thump as the bat hit the wall, trying to follow them, then Ford and Dipper were shooting through a tunnel as slick as a slip-and-slide, until it dumped them in the middle of another tunnel. Ford landed on something hard that snapped under his hip. 

“Ow,” he gasped. “Okay, that – really – _ow_.”

“We should be safe,” Dipper said, getting slowly to his feet. “That slide is a good quarter-mile long. I've dealt with vampires before, they rarely – you still have the moonstones! You really did it, kid!” 

Ford laughed weakly. The moonstones were shining dimly through his jacket, illuminating the tunnel. He rolled over and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He'd landed on what looked like a really old Native American hammer and snapped the handle in half. There were other weapons scattered around the edges of the tunnel, and Dipper was bending down to examine one. 

“Fascinating,” he murmured aloud. “And so familiar...Ford, I think we should get –”

_GREEEEEEE!_

“Gah!” 

“Quick, this way!” Ford leaped to his feet and raced down the tunnel.

“Where are we –”

“Trust me!” 

The tunnel went up at a steep incline and Ford could see the gleam of the massive tooth at the top. He squeezed through the opening and reached down a hand. 

“C'mon, hurry! Suck in!” 

Dipper actually sucked in his breath and they push-pulled him through. 

“What was – is that a tooth?” Dipper said, looking delighted. “An actual tooth from the Island Head?!”

“It is!” Ford said proudly. “I discovered it ages ago. No way the bat can fit through a hole that small –”

The bat's head popped out. 

“Really?! STILL?!”

The bat _gree_ 'd at them, then suddenly seemed to liquify. It poured itself onto the forest floor, touching down light as a shadow, and rose up into a woman in a black velvet dress. Her dark hair shone like water and her gray-blue eyes blazed with barely contained power. 

“Mayor Frost?” Ford said, just as Dipper yelped, “Sadie?!” 

“You know her?”

“Did you say 'Mayor'?”

“A lot can change in thirty years, darling,” Frost purred. Her voice was low, sweet, yet it reverberated through his very bones. She locked eyes with Ford. “I didn't mean to frighten you. Please...come closer.” 

Ford recognized the numbing fog in his brain and his hands flew to his ears. 

“'Didn't mean to frighten me'? You just attacked me and chased us for half an hour! I didn't even –”

Dipper's hand on his shoulder brought him up short, and only then did Ford realize he'd started walking slowly towards her. 

“Her power's in her eyes, not her voice,” Dipper said. “And stop it, Sadie, that's my nephew you're hypnotizing! I thought you were done with this kind of thing, that's the whole reason we set up the local blood drive!” 

Ford glanced to Sadie's left and saw her shrugging elegantly. “People forgot. The whole reason I ran for Mayor was to make donating a legal requirement. But you know, I quite like the taste of power...and I've been greatly enjoying the free samples.” 

“Quit staring at me like I'm lunch!” Ford snapped. “And just 'cuz the Blind Eye messed stuff up doesn't give you license to treat the town like a free buffet!” 

Dipper gave him an odd look but nodded. “Agreed. I'm afraid I can't allow you to maintain your post as Mayor.” 

“Should've thought of that before you reactivated your Portal. That gravity turned my house into rubble, why else do you think I was down there with the common pear-munchers? I need my job to pay for rebuilding my house. And for living in the manner to which I am accustomed. Besides,” she added, turning toward the tooth, “I'm hardly the only bloodsucker in politics.”

Dipper raised his ray gun and fired, scorching the edge of the tunnel. She let out a small yelp and glared at him. 

“What was _that_ for?”

“I will not allow the townsfolk to be preyed upon without their consent,” he said firmly. “You will write a letter of resignation, which we will submit to the Town Hall, and you will refrain from drawing blood from a living human again.” 

Frost only scoffed. “I'd like to see you try and stop me,” she said, stepping over to the tooth. 

Dipper fired again, this time so close he singed her arm. She leaped back and whirled around, fangs bared, eyes flashing. 

“ _Don't_. Do that again,” she hissed. 

“I have plenty of ammo left,” Dipper said grimly. “I should also note that a certain setting on my gun will allow it to render the cementum in that tooth malleable as putty, and the laser will melt it, sealing the opening. Luckily for you I happen to have just the materials you need to write your resignation. And I'd hurry. The sun will rise in roughly twenty minutes.” 

A shiver ran down Ford's back. His Great-Uncle sounded so cool!

Her eyes blazed. “You little – come _HERE!_ ” 

Her voice dug into Ford's brain like a steel blade. Pure animal fear shot down his spine. His head snapped up and her eyes burned into his skull, his knees turned to water and he grabbed his Great-Uncle's coat with a gasp. A massive hand gripped his upper arm, steadying him. 

“No,” Dipper said coldly. “And if you try that on us again you will be very, very sorry.”

Ford kept his eyes squeezed shut. Tension hummed in the air like pure electricity, thick, hot, suffocating. Then all at once it snapped and he could breathe again. He risked cracking an eye open. 

“Fine,” Frost growled. “Just give me the pen and paper.” 

Dipper handed her a sheaf of vellum and a quill. 

“You might want to look up Preston Northwest,” Ford offered, as she handed the letter back. “You both like money and mooching off of others, you have a lot in common!” 

“Don't push your luck,” she snarled. 

They waited until she vanished down the tunnel, then began the trek back to the Shack. The sky was slowly turning pink above the trees. 

“Well that was a thing,” Ford said faintly. “Mayor Frost was a vampire. In retrospect that really explains the crows and general goth vibe.” 

“I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my romantic history with her to Mabel,” Dipper said. “She tends to put the 'love' in 'Lovecraft.'”

“And the 'craft,'” Ford agreed. “Last week she had me making fake tombstones to commemorate the 'death' of Greasy's pickle-flavored bacon. She even had me mummify the last actual slice of it. I had to look up the method and everything, I still can't get the smell out of my nose.” 

Dipper shook his head. “Mabel's always been one to take advantage of the intellect of others. It's such a waste of your potential!”

He looked up. “I – potential?” 

“Absolutely!” Dipper grinned and patted Ford's back. “I have a few affairs to set in order with those moonstones, but my lab will always be open to you if you ever require guidance investigating the paranormal.” 

Suddenly Ford wasn't tired at all. “Really?!” 

“Of course, my boy! Perhaps we can even arrange another mission tomorrow night. There's a Fountain of Sooth not too far from here that lets you predict the future with every sip. Unfortunately the predictions are usually set in unbearably cheesy and obscure limericks. I've long suspected the Soothsquitoes frequent the pool, but there are fish and frogs in the pool, as well. I'd be interested to discover if the warts on the frogs spell out any particular prediction...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATED NOTE:  
> I've been really struggling with writing the next episode. And I don't want to do episodes erratically. So this is the plan: This...is the Last Hiatus. I will be working on the rest of the series. And when it returns - FOR IT SHALL RETURN - there will be UPDATES EVERY WEEK TWICE WEEKLY (for episodes and shorts). Comments or kudos really keep me motivated, so thank you so much to those of you who left one of each or both! See you soon! *grabs chisel and attacks writer's block*
> 
> Dipper is well-versed in interdimensional healing techniques, and he treated them both before Mabel got up. Ford was greatly relieved by this. Her home remedies tended to involve copious amounts of bright pink gauze and a diet of chicken noodle and chimichanga soup. (Not even Gompers would eat _that!_ )


End file.
